Auburn Engineer Fall 2023

AUBURN ENGINEER A l s o i n t h i s i s s u e /// B E T T E R T O G E T H E R /// 34

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

NEW BEGINNINGS

FA L L 2 0 2 3

EXCEPTIONAL SERVICE

Steve Taylor, who served as the college’s interim dean from April 2022-May 2023 and currently serves as Auburn University’s senior vice president for research and economic development, was honored by the Auburn Alumni Engineering Council in September with a portrait recognizing his service to the college. It hangs in the Shelby Center along with portraits of the other deans who have served the college during its 150 years.

TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S

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College powers up with new dean of engineering

Like father, like son

Online cohorts expanding Auburn Engineering’s footprint

Former Chemical Engineering Chair Mario Eden takes the helm

Tom and Hunter Burch make college history with a story that’s uniquely Auburn

Corporate partnerships are a win-win for the college, students and companies

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It’s My Job: Corey Cooper ’05

Be the Creed: Patrick Duke ’99

And the award goes to…

BOTE brand founder embraces lifestyle with creativity and entrepreneurship

Hueytown born and Hueytown bred, alumnus provides opportunities ahead

The Auburn Alumni Engineering Council honors nine worthy engineers

ON THE COVER /// NEW BEGINNINGS

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Mario Eden, who previously served as the chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering, took over as the college’s 14th dean in May 2023.

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SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

FROM THE DEAN

FALL 2023 /// Volume 33, Issue 2

DEAN Mario Eden EDITOR AND DIRECTOR, COMMUNICATIONS AND MARKETING Austin Phillips CONTRIBUTORS Gracie Barranco Dustin Duncan Bethany Giles Jeremy Henderson Paul Hollis Karen Hunley Joe McAdory Cassie Montgomery Carla Nelson Diane Pham GRAPHIC DESIGN Danny Doyle Greg Key WEB MANAGER/CONTRIBUTOR Tyler Patterson Wilson Reeves VIDEOGRAPHY/PHOTOGRAPHY Marcus Kluttz John Sluis Visit Auburn Engineer online at eng.auburn.edu/magazine for videos, photos, podcasts and more. You may also submit news items, suggestions or comments by clicking the Contact Us tab.

Auburn Engineer is published twice yearly by the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering.

Engineering Communications and Marketing c/o Editor 1210D Shelby Center Auburn, AL 36849 334-844-2444

I am honored to address you — our alumni, faculty, staff, friends and corporate partners — in this first issue of Auburn Engineer during my tenure as the new dean of the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering.

Serving this phenomenal college and the Department of Chemical Engineering for the past 20 years has been one of the greatest blessings of my life. I am so thankful for the support of the chemical engineering department faculty, staff, students and alumni for the past decade during my time as department chair, and I am humbled by this opportunity to take Auburn Engineering to the next level. I would also like to thank former Interim Dean Steve Taylor, who currently serves as Auburn’s senior vice president for research and economic development, for his dedication to the college during this yearlong transition.

The Samuel Ginn College of Engineering is a special place made up of people from all walks of life who share our vision to provide our students with the most exceptional experience while also helping to change the world through innovative and groundbreaking research. As former engineering dean and current President Chris Roberts often says, “we’ve earned the right to dream the biggest dreams,” and that’s exactly what we’re going to do. We’re going to provide our students with the tools and competencies to go out into the world — as leaders — and change it for the better. We’re going to pioneer research that improves lives, makes our country safer and drives our economy. We’re going to be a leader for this great state to ensure that generations long after us are afforded every opportunity to succeed and thrive.

But we can’t do it alone. It is going to take all of us — faculty, staff, alumni and friends, as well as strategic regional and national partners — rowing in the same direction to get us to our rightful place among the most elite engineering institutions in the country. And I am fully committed to doing everything I can to help us get there.

I’ve spent nearly my entire professional life here at this great university, and I look forward to many more years to come. I thank you all for your hard work and commitment to making ours the best student-centered engineering experience in America. I am eager to work alongside you as we continue our upward trajectory.

This is truly a group effort, and together we can achieve even greater things because we believe in Auburn and love it.

War Eagle!

© 2023 Samuel Ginn College of Engineering, Auburn University

Mario R. Eden Auburn University is an equal opportunity educational institution/employer.

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HAPPENINGS

Auburn Engineering undergraduate programs ranked among U.S. News & World Report’s Top 30 public institutions

Conference and again No. 1 in the state.

The college produces one-third of the state of Alabama’s engineering graduates annually and boasts several prominent alumni, including four astronauts and Tim Cook, CEO of Apple Inc.

The Samuel Ginn College of Engineering was again recognized as a national leader in higher education, ranking among the nation’s top public institutions in U.S. News & World Report’s 2024 Best Undergraduate Engineering Programs.

The publication, which ranks undergraduate programs throughout the nation each fall, ranked Auburn Engineering No. 30, up three spots from No. 33 last year.

“Our consistent ranking among the top colleges across the country continues to validate the Samuel Ginn College

of Engineering as a national leader in education and research, and it recognizes our mission of providing the best studentcentered engineering experience in America,” said Mario Eden, dean of engineering. “Not only is this ranking a testament to our continued commitment to excellence, it demonstrates that peer institutions recognize Auburn Engineering among the nation’s elite.”

Auburn Engineering also ranks as the No. 31 public engineering graduate program and the No. 16 engineering graduate online program among all institutions.

The college also ranked No. 3 among public institutions in the Southeastern

Auburn Engineering graduate program climbs to No. 31 in U.S. News & World Report rankings Similar to the undergraduate rankings, the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering was recognized as a leader in graduate education, ranking among the nation’s top public institutions in U.S. News & World Report’s 2023-24 Best Graduate Schools.

U.S. News & World Report, which ranks graduate programs nationally each spring, designated Auburn Engineering

No. 31 among public institutions when its annual list was released in April.

Auburn Engineering’s graduate programs continued the upward trajectory in the annual rankings among public institutions, climbing 10 spots in the past four years.

“This is a testament to our premier graduate engineering experience at Auburn,” said Maria Auad, associate dean for graduate studies and faculty development. “We have invested significant resources and energy into hiring renowned faculty, developing exceptional student-

Auburn University names Steve Taylor senior vice president for research and economic development

support programs, building unrivaled facilities for cutting-edge research and providing new opportunities for experiential learning. This ranking confirms that commitment.”

scholarship and economic development across the university.

Steve Taylor has been named Auburn University’s senior vice president for research and economic development, President Christopher B. Roberts announced in May.

Taylor began his new position June 1.

Taylor served as the interim dean of Auburn’s Samuel Ginn College of Engineering from April 2022-May 2023.

As Auburn’s chief research officer, Taylor reports directly to the president and is responsible for all aspects of research,

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Diversity within Auburn’s eight engineering departments — aerospace; biosystems; chemical; civil and environmental; computer science and software; electrical and computer; industrial and systems; and mechanical — provide students with 13 undergraduate degree opportunities, in addition to a host of graduate programs.

Steve Taylor

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

“One of my goals for Auburn is to further elevate our research and creative scholarship in order to secure and sustain a leadership position among the nation’s transformative universities,” Roberts said.

“As I said at my installation ceremony, Auburn has earned the right to dream the biggest dreams. I know we have the ability and capability to do more. I look forward to working with Dr. Taylor as we thoughtfully expand our research enterprise.”

HAPPENINGS

Selen Cremaschi named chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering Selen Cremaschi, the B. Redd and Susan W. Redd Eminent Scholar Chair Professor, was named chair of Auburn University’s Department of Chemical Engineering.

Cremaschi succeeds Mario Eden, who was named as dean of the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering in May. She is only the third woman to chair or head an Auburn Engineering department. Her tenure began July 1.

synthesis, machine learning and planning under uncertainty. Her research group develops systems analysis and decision support tools for complex systems, mainly focusing on the biomanufacturing, pharmaceutical and energy industry.

Selen Cremaschi

engineering experience in America. I would also like to thank Dr. Bob Ashurst for his service and dedication to the department during his time as acting chair.”

“I am thrilled to take on this role and help take the Department of Chemical Engineering to the next level,” Cremaschi said. “I appreciate Dr. Eden’s confidence in me to serve in this capacity, and I look forward to working with him again as we elevate the best student-centered

Cremaschi has served as faculty member in chemical engineering since 2016.

She previously served as a chemical engineering professor at the University of Tulsa, a visiting faculty scholar at Chevron Energy Technology Company and as an assistant research scientist and postdoctoral research associate at Purdue University’s Discovery Park.

Listen to our podcasts with Selen Cremaschi and Steve Taylor at eng.auburn.edu/ginning

She earned both her bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in chemical engineering from Bogazici University in Turkey and her doctorate from Purdue in the same discipline. Her research interests include risk management, optimization, process

Director of Wireless Research and Education Center part of three NSF-funded projects Shiwen Mao, director of Auburn University’s Wireless Research and Education Center, is part of three National Science Foundation (NSF) grants combining for nearly $2.2 million. Auburn’s share is $940,000.

Mao’s $399,998 project is titled, “Functional Data Analysis-aided Learning Methods for Robust Wireless Measurements,” and aims to 1) develop a deep learningbased approach to address fundamental regression problems in functional data; 2) develop a better understanding of functional data regression and classification under the distribution between test data and training data for effective wireless measurements in

Cremaschi has successfully acquired $13.3 million in external research funding during her time as a faculty member.

She received Auburn Engineering’s Senior Research Award for Excellence, Tulsa’s Zelimir Schmidt Award for Outstanding Researcher and a National Science Foundation CAREER award, among others.

She has published one book chapter, 55 journal articles and 65 peer-reviewed conference publications. She is a member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) and has served as the 2014 programming chair for AIChE Computing and Systems Technology Division Process Design Area (CAST 10A) and as director of the AIChE CAST Division from 2018-20. Cremaschi currently serves as the second vice-chair of the AIChE CAST Division and Programming Chair of CAST 10A.

cost, unobtrusive posture capture system for healthcare and home environments.

With passive RFID tags attached or fabricated into clothing, wireless signals can be captured and analyzed to infer human activities.

Shiwen Mao

dynamic environments; 3) develop a deep learning-based approach to address the fundamental bottleneck of quantile regression-based methods; and 4) develop wireless measurement applications for integration and validation.

Mao’s remaining NSF-awarded projects involve radio frequency identification (RFID). His work, “When RFID Meets AI for Occluded Body Skeletal Posture Capture in Smart Healthcare,” was awarded $240,000.

With collaborators, he will create a low-

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Mao, an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Fellow, earned a $299,997 grant for the project, “Collaborative Research: AI-driven RFID Sensing for Smart Health Applications.”

To reduce the cost of wearable health monitoring systems, Mao and five colleagues are collaborating to use RFID to sense respiration rates, conduct pulmonary tests and monitor heartbeats. The project’s algorithms are expected to be validated by experiments in real clinical environments with a special focus on detecting Parkinson’s disease and breathing-based interstitial lung disease.

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HAPPENINGS

Two Auburn Engineering Honors College students named Goldwater Scholars Two Auburn Engineering students, Ayden Kemp and Maggie Nelson, are now Barry M. Goldwater Scholars — an honor annually bestowed on only 413 students nationwide.

The scholarship is widely considered the most prestigious award in the United States for undergraduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

“These exceptional students embody the intellectual curiosity, vision and tenacity that the Auburn University community holds in highest regard,” said Tiffany Sippial, director of the Honors College.

“We could not be more proud of their accomplishments and look forward to celebrating their future successes.”

ISE assistant professor earns NSF CAREER Award for AM fatigue life prediction through deep learning Four years ago, GE Aerospace transitioned to using additive manufacturing (AM) for its new Catalyst turboprop engine. That meant 800 traditionally manufactured components were consolidated into just 12 metal AM parts, the development cycle was dropped from five-10 years to only two, the engine weight reduced by 5% and the fuel consumption improved by 1%.

For GE, that’s a pretty big deal.

If other U.S. aircraft manufacturers went the same route, that would be a pretty big deal for the planet.

There’s a reason AM research across the globe is expected to push $24 billion

From left, Ayden Kemp and Maggie Nelson

Kemp, a senior in the Honors College, is double-majoring in aerospace engineering and biosystems engineering with a bioprocess option. Through his research, “Co-Pyrolysis of Biomass and Waste Plastics for the Production of Biofuels,” Kemp is investigating the practicality of heating mixed-waste streams that include both organic material and plastic wastes in an oxygenless environment to break them down into smaller components for the production of biofuels. Nelson, a senior in the Honors College from Birmingham, is majoring in aerospace

engineering and minoring in materials engineering, philosophy and sustainability studies within the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering and the College of Liberal Arts, respectively. Titled, “Effects of Recycling on Polystyrene Shape Memory Polymers for In-Situ Resource Utilization,” her research aims to establish sustainable material infrastructures for future aerospace developments. Nelson works with Russell W. Mailen in the Department of Aerospace Engineering, and she collaborates with Maria Soledad Peresin and Diego GomezMaldonado, both in the College of Forestry, Wildlife and Environment.

Listen to our podcasts with Ayden Kemp and Maggie Nelson at eng.auburn.edu/ginning

by 2027, and the revolutionary impact on the aviation industry is one of them.

Experts estimate that substantial adoption of 3D-printed parts could knock 200 million gallons off of annual aviation fuel consumption. If the parts work.

Peter Liu, left

Despite the demonstrated success of metal additive manufacturing in various industries, the performance uncertainty of AM parts undermines the potential of deploying AM for high-consequence applications. This is why the National Science Foundation is turning to Peter Liu, assistant professor of industrial and systems engineering, in the form of a $500,000 CAREER Award meant to generate new insights into defect formation relevant to fatigue performance of parts manufactured through laser powder-bed fusion and uncover the synergistic impacts of multi-scale factors on fatigue fractures. Liu hopes the five-year

project, “Deep Learning to Understand Fatigue Performance and Processing Relationship of Complex Parts by Additive Manufacturing for High-consequence Applications,” will establish a physicscentric, machine learning framework for fatigue life predictions, serving as a technological foundation for future metal AM production of dynamic load-bearing applications and establishment of a resilient and reconfigurable supply chain, and thus, enhance the competitiveness of U.S. industry.

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SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

HAPPENINGS

Auburn ranked among Top 100 U.S. universities for utility patents granted by National Academy of Inventors Auburn University has been ranked among the Top 100 U.S. Universities Granted Utility Patents in 2022, a list published recently by the National Academy of Inventors (NAI). The NAI is an organization of U.S. and international universities and governmental and nonprofit research institutes, with more than 4,000 individual inventor members and fellows spanning more than 250 institutions worldwide.

Thanks to 12 new patents issued in 2022, Auburn earned a spot on the list, which was created to highlight and celebrate American innovation and to recognize those universities that play a large role in advancing the innovation ecosystem within the U.S. and beyond.

The NAI was founded in 2010 to recognize and encourage inventors with patents issued from the United States Patent and Trademark Office; enhance the visibility of academic technology and innovation; encourage the disclosure of intellectual property; educate and mentor innovative students; and translate the inventions of its members to benefit society.

In addition to its inclusion on the Top 100 U.S. Universities list, Auburn has seen seven of its faculty members named as NAI fellows and one as an NAI senior member. The prestigious NAI fellows program honors academicians “who have demonstrated a spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development and the welfare of society.”

Current and emeritus Auburn faculty members previously recognized as NAI fellows from the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering include Fa Foster Dai, the Godbold Chair Professor, and J. David Irwin, professor and head emeritus, both from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering; and Bruce Tatarchuk, the Charles E. Gavin III Professor of chemical engineering.

Jin Wang, the first Auburn faculty member to be named a senior member, is the Walt and Virginia Woltosz Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering. Wang’s research innovations center around effectively converting waste into value-added products. In particular, she focuses on using a novel microbial coculture to convert agriculture wastederived biogas into bioplastic feedstock. This method has shown great potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and water and land pollution. NAI senior members are active faculty, scientists and administrators from member institutions who have demonstrated remarkable innovations that have had, or aspire to have, real impact on the welfare of society.

Michael Howard

Assistant professor in chemical engineering earns $430K National Science Foundation grant Michael Howard, assistant professor in chemical engineering, is developing computer models to help scientists understand and design soft materials, from industrial fluids and consumer products to nanoparticles delivered to complex environments like the body.

His project, “Elements: Multiparticle Collision Dynamics Simulations of Mesoscale Hydrodynamic Interactions in Complex Soft Materials and Environments,” will provide open-source software with advanced features that enable new science. The software will also enhance transparency and reproducibility by supplanting private codes currently used by researchers.

The National Science Foundation awarded Howard, the project’s principal investigator, $430,000 toward the three-year study.

“Building on software I created when I was a doctoral student, my team and collaborators from the University of Houston will develop software that can be used for modeling soft materials like nanoparticles or polymers,” Howard said.

“We’re not necessarily trying to answer scientific questions ourselves. We’re trying to develop tools that will help other researchers.”

Listen to our podcast with Michael Howard at eng.auburn.edu/ginning

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HAPPENINGS

Professor in ECE part of $1.8M study to explore security solutions for semiconductor supply chains Rapid advancements in the semiconductor industry have enabled the broad adoption of electronics into multiple sectors of society including commercial, industrial and defense, often improving the quality of life and business efficiency.

The globalization of electronics, however, opens a Pandora’s Box of threats with untrusted products, counterfeit integrated circuits, intellectual property piracy, cloning and other malicious modifications.

Ujjwal Guin, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, has an idea that could help resolve some of these potential issues.

Ujjwal Guin

Shubhra Kanti (Santu) Karmaker

His co-authored proposal, “Securing Semiconductor Supply Chains and Networks using Zero-Knowledge Proofs and Blockchain,” earned a $1.82 million grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

Assistant professor in CSSE earns two grants that combine for $1.25M

Guin said zero-knowledge proofs help secure the Internet of Things and cyberphysical systems against malicious adversaries by creating zero-knowledge properties, allowing an adversary to “learn nothing.”

The assistant professor in computer science and software engineering recently secured grants combining nearly $1.25 million to: 1) develop cutting-edge Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques for automatically analyzing and comparing multi-perspective narratives at scale and 2) create an innovative AI-assisted interactive learning environment for middle school science students as they conduct simulation-based experiments.

Chemical engineering researchers part of $23.8M project to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from paper mills Selen Cremaschi, the B. Redd & Susan W. Redd Professor and chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering, and Zhihua Jiang, the Auburn Pulp and Paper Associate Professor in chemical engineering, are co-principal investigators of a $23.8 million study on carbon dioxide capture and storage, led by Blue Sky Infrastructure and funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Auburn will receive $635,000 of the funding for the project, “Timberlands Sequestration — A Biomass Carbon Dioxide Capture and Removal Project at a Pulp Mill in Alabama.”

It aims to develop biomass carbon capture and storage for the Alabama River Cellulose pulp and paper mill in Monroe County.

By leveraging their expertise in process systems engineering and a deep understanding of the pulp and paper industry, Cremaschi and Jiang will lead

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From left, Zhihua Jiang and Selen Cremaschi

researchers in conducting extensive simulations, analyses and technical evaluations to develop innovative solutions for carbon dioxide reduction and propose cost-effective approaches to implement these solutions.

“This project is a major step toward net zero emissions,” Cremaschi said. “Our research aims to capture and store carbon dioxide emissions from pulp and paper production sites, converting waste into valuable chemicals used internally for pulp and paper operations. By targeting carbon dioxide emissions from industrial operations and power generation, we have the opportunity to make a significant impact on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

Shubhra Kanti (Santu) Karmaker’s work is paying off, literally.

As principal investigator, Karmaker was recently awarded a two-year, $700,854 National Science Foundation Research on Emerging Technologies for Teaching and Learning grant for his project, “An Intelligent Assistant to Support Teachers and Students in Simulation-Based Science Learning.”

Karmaker was awarded another $542,485 by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research for his core NLP research, “A Novel Human-AI Collaborative Framework for Multi-Perspective Narrative Analytics and Braiding at Scale.”

“Receiving these grants is important because they provide researchers with the resources necessary to push forward,” said Karmaker. “Also, research awards offer credibility that your work is important within the academic community.”

HAPPENINGS

$1M USDA-funded phosphorus mitigation project latest in CBB’s growing research portfolio

to those large, oxygen-deprived “dead zones” — the Gulf of Mexico has one the size of New Jersey — you read about in the news.

For Auburn’s Center for Bioenergy and Bioproducts (CBB), 2023 is coming up roses. And ryegrass.

“Biochar is a material made from plants through the thermochemical conversion of biomass,” said CBB Director Sushil Adhikari, Alumni Professor in the Department of Biosystems Engineering.

“It has micro-, meso- and macro-pore networks, functional groups and inorganic compounds that can absorb phosphorus.

However, regular biochar isn’t usually made to distribute phosphorus to plants because fundamental science on the transient nutrient retention and release of biochar is lacking.”

That’s one of the model crops CBB researchers, along with a team of academic collaborators from the University of Delaware, New Mexico State University, Ireland and Northern Ireland, will use for a $1 million USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture project testing the efficacy of a dual-function biochar substrate that captures excess phosphorus in soils and releases it slowly to meet plant needs.

At least, it’s lacking for now.

The main idea, ultimately, is to keep the stuff out of oceans and lakes where too much phosphorus runoff from increasingly expensive synthetic fertilizers contributes

“Over the next year, our team will use state-of-the-art material characterization techniques to gain insight into slow

Sushil Adhikari, Wendiam Sawadgo and Hossein Jahromi

phosphorus release properties in greenhouses and field trials conducted in Ireland and Northern Ireland,” Adhikari said.

Recent studies show high legacy phosphorus applications saturating soils with phosphorus which increasingly threatens water quality in the countries’ lakes. Adhikari serves as the project’s principal investigator (PI); co-PIs are Wendiam Sawadgo, extension professor in the College of Agriculture, and Hossein Jahromi, assistant research professor in the Department of Biosystems Engineering.

Student creates device that instantly detects disease, wins pitch competition What if infectious diseases can be detected quickly, accurately and non-invasively? They can, and a graduate student in electrical and computer engineering knows how.

Parvin Fathi-Hafshejani

Parvin Fathi-Hafshejani developed a rapid diagnostic tool, Dropllel, that uses an electronic biosensor to detect pathogens such as viruses and can diagnose pregnancy, COVID, influenza and more. Her creation was so convincing, 13 industry professional judges awarded Fathi-Hafshejani first place and $25,000 in early-stage startup capital at Auburn University’s ninth annual Tiger Cage Business Idea Competition in the spring.

“I’m so excited, humbled and thankful to the university’s entrepreneurship program for developing my business plan, and to the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and my supervisor Dr. Masoud Mahjouri-Samani for providing me with the resources to produce a device that addresses a significant unmet need in the healthcare industry,” Fathi-Hafshejani said.

Dropllel also earned the $4,000 Thomas Walter Center for Technology Management “Special Award” to be used for hardware/software prototyping.

Listen to our podcasts with Ujjwal Guin, Sushil Adhikari and Parvin Fathi-Hafshejani at eng.auburn.edu/ginning

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HAPPENINGS

Elizabeth Lipke, left, and Yuan Tian

Jared Jones

Chemical engineering researchers win Alabama Launchpad with device that replicates human-like tissue

Recent graduate in electrical engineering named Alabama Association of Colleges and Employers Co-op Student of the Year

Elizabeth Lipke and Yuan Tian are mastering the art of human-like tissue replication. Lipke, the Mary and John H. Sanders Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, and Tian, a post-doctoral researcher in chemical engineering, co-founded biomedical company VivoSphere, and won first place and $25,000 in Alabama Launchpad’s Cycle 2 concept stage finals in August.

VivoSphere, a transformational 3D cell encapsulation device, creates humanlike tissue for testing human-like drug responses to reduce false positive drug candidates at the earliest stages to avoid costly drug failure during the clinical stage. VivoSphere was born out of a 2021 National Science Foundation-awarded project, “I-Corps: Spheroidal engineered tissues for more efficient drug discovery,” with Lipke as principal investigator and advisor and Tian as the founder.

“I want our research to have meaningful impact,” said Tian, who earned a doctorate in chemical engineering in 2020. “We don’t want to just add to recent research publications. We want our research to turn into an actual and beneficial product.

VivoSphere is a platform that will help researchers with unparalleled capability to develop drugs, save lives and transform our fight against cancer.”

Listen to our podcast with Elizabeth Lipke at eng.auburn.edu/ginning

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Jared Jones’ Auburn University co-op experience keeps producing results.

Jones, the university’s 2022 Frank Vandegrift Co-op Student of the Year, was recently named the Alabama Association of Colleges and Employers (AACE) Co-op Student of the Year for 2023.

Jones, who graduated in May with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, developed a proof-of-concept test device for sonar systems, debugged software on damaged units and more during his 2019-21 co-op experience at Johnson Outdoors Marine Electronics in Eufaula.

“Receiving the award has been an incredible honor,” said Jones, now an electrical engineer in Dynetics’ product development department. “When I began my co-op, I never imagined that I would have been nominated for something like this, much less received it. I am thankful to Johnson Outdoors for providing a great co-op experience, and for those who mentored me while I was there. Their desire to help me be successful has gone beyond just the workplace as can be seen by their willingness to provide a recommendation letter for the award I received, and that means a lot.

“I am also very thankful for Auburn and the co-op program. It is neat that the program is involved with organizations such as the Alabama Association of Colleges and Employers that seek to recognize students,” he added.

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

Auburn Alumni Engineering Council inducts Class of 2028 The Auburn Alumni Engineering Council inducted seven new members to the group during its annual spring meeting in the Brown-Kopel Center.

Each council class is active for five years.

Those inducted into the Class of 2028 were:

• Ed Blackmon, ’93 civil engineering,

principal at Stantec Consulting Services • Larry Davis, ’74 industrial engineering, retired brigadier general from the U.S. Corps of Engineers • Patrick Duke, ’99 civil engineering, managing director/Americas leader at Healthcare Project Advisory Solutions • Shane Goodwin, ’00 mechanical engineering, director of supply chain deployment at Schneider Electric • Tom Hand, ’95 civil engineering, CEO and chairman of the board at Volkert • Mark Ogles, ’89 electrical engineering, founder and retired president of Freedom Information Systems • Art Slotkin, ’68 aerospace engineering, retired executive vice president from Science Applications International Corp.

“Each year, I’m more and more impressed by the prowess of these highly accomplished Auburn engineers who are willing to serve and give back to this institution we all love,” said Brad Christopher, ’91 and ’93 civil engineering who serves as chair of the council and president of LBYD Engineers. “These distinguished engineers are a welcomed addition to the council as we usher in a new dean, Dr. Mario Eden.”

HAPPENINGS

Auburn Engineering recognized

by National Academic Advising Association Janet Moore, assistant dean and director of the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering program Engineered for Success, and Savannah Woodall, advisor in Auburn’s Honors College, were recently recognized by the National Academic Advising Association (NACADA) Global Community for Academic Advising for excellence in their efforts to advance student development and achievement.

Woodall was awarded the Outstanding New Advisor Award in a Primary Advising Role for her work to advance numerous programs and initiatives within the college, including a Canvas course geared toward new students and a revamped peer instructor program.

The recipient of the 2023 Provost’s Outstanding New Advisor Award, Woodall has been an advisor in the Honors College

since 2020. Over the past year, Woodall has been an active member of Auburn’s Advisors Caucus and served on the university’s scholarship, diversity, equity and inclusion, retention and success and assessment committees. In addition to her membership in the NACADA mentorship program, Woodall was awarded the organization’s annual conference scholarship in 2021.

Engineered for Success was recognized with the NACADA Outstanding Advising Program Award for its emphasis on providing transformational advising practices. The developmental advising model integrates psychosocial theories of academic self-efficacy, goal achievement and agency in learning by using a referral system designed to proactively address engineering students’ critical progression and GPA issues. Under Moore’s leadership, the Engineering Student Services team integrates motivational interviewing techniques as part of their academic success meetings with students.

Engineering Student Services honored with two Provost Advising Awards The Provost’s Academic Advising Awards recognize advisors across campus who have engaged students in the collaborative process of advising and have made a significant impact on students’ academic careers.

This year, the college was presented with two advising awards — Outstanding Student Support Representative and Outstanding Advising Program.

Former Academic Support Manager Kathy Friedenreich made an impact on the academic journeys of thousands of students through her work in the

Engineering Student Services team

Engineering Student Services Office and was recognized for her work with the Outstanding Student Support Representative award. Through her vision and leadership, Friedenreich grew the college’s student support program from a small tutoring center into a full-service Learning Center with a professional team that includes a tutor coordinator, more than 40 peer tutors, graduate assistants and trained peer academic coaches. The

Janet Moore

“This level of recognition by NACADA symbolizes the extraordinary impact our advisors have on our students and our broader advising community,” said Ruthie Spiers, director of university advising.

“Not only do they acknowledge the remarkable efforts of our advisors, but they also showcase our institution’s efforts to advance best practices and drive innovation across the various stages of student development.”

Listen to our podcasts with Janet Moore at eng.auburn.edu/ginning

second award — Outstanding Advising Program — was presented to the entire Engineering Student Services team for its program, “Engineered for Success.” With the creation of an advising model and referral system to address pre-engineering students’ critical progression and mitigate GPA issues, Engineered for Success integrates advising best practices with psychological theories to support student success. Through structured Academic Success Meetings, academic advisors and students work together to create personalized Academic Success Contracts.

By using motivational interviewing techniques, advisors use these meetings to help students set goals, identify potential obstacles to success and determine critical strategies and resources to overcome individual academic challenges.

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HAPPENINGS

AUTRI director earns prestigious Steinberg Award for contributions to transportation education At its September conference in La Jolla, California, the American Road and Transportation Builders Association honored Larry Rilett, director of the Auburn University Transportation Research Institute (AUTRI), with its prestigious Steinberg Award, which annually recognizes “an individual who has made remarkable contributions to transportation education.”

Shiwen Mao

Wireless engineering professor earns SEC’s Faculty Achievement Award Auburn Engineering professor and internationally recognized expert in wireless networking and multimedia communications Shiwen Mao was named the recipient of the Southeastern Conference’s (SEC) 2023 Faculty Achievement Award for Auburn.

Larry Rilett, right

education, and this award is further testament to his work in this field,” said Mario Eden, dean of engineering. “We are extremely proud of him and honored to have him as part of the Auburn Engineering family.”

“Dr. Rilett is one of the nation’s leading experts in transportation research and

Mao, the Earle C. Williams Eminent Scholar Chair in the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, received a $5,000 honorarium from the conference and served as Auburn’s nominee for the SEC Professor of the Year among the Faculty Achievement Award winners from each SEC university.

“Dr. Mao is a remarkable scholar whose contributions to student learning and exemplary record of research and scholarship personify what I believe the SEC Faculty Achievement Award signifies,” said Auburn President Christopher B. Roberts.

The SEC Faculty Achievement Awards, created to recognize faculty accomplishments, scholarly contributions and discoveries, were established by SEC presidents and chancellors and are administered by the SEC provosts. The awards were first presented in 2012.

Professors’ work with roadway resiliency recognized by national organization Jeff LaMondia, professor of civil and environmental engineering, and Benjamin Bowers, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, were recently awarded the Resilient Roads Roundtable’s Innovators and Influencers Award.

The Resilient Road Roundtable is a collection of national organizations motivated to improve the longevity and resiliency of America’s roadways.

The bi-annual Resilient Roads Innovators and Influencers awards recognize outstanding transportation resilience advocates and those contributing to the advancement of transportation infrastructure resilience.

From left, Paul Schmitz, Ben Bowers, Jeff LaMondia and Tommy James

be able to provide ways to make this task easier and more consistent for everyone.”

LaMondia and Bowers were singled out for their Performance-based Resilience Evaluation Program (PREP) Framework.

PREP is a program intended to measure transportation system resilience using data and performance measurements.

“Making our communities and infrastructure resilient is an essential task for decision-makers across the country,” LaMondia said. “We are really pleased to

Listen to our podcasts with Larry Rilett, Ben Bowers, Jeff LaMondia and Matthew Yarnold at eng.auburn.edu/ginning

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SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

HAPPENINGS

CEE assistant professor lands $1.25 million FAA grant

Emmanuel Winful, right

Samuel Ginn College of Engineering only academic institution among Green Cross Award semifinalists The Samuel Ginn College of Engineering was recently recognized as the only academic institution among 36 National Safety Council Green Cross Award semifinalists. How? By advocating for transformational research that doesn’t push the boundaries of safety.

“Striving for safety excellence doesn’t inhibit research progress,” said Emmanuel Winful, health and safety manager in the college. “Safety excellence is finding ways to do things better.”

Auburn President Christopher B. Roberts, who served as the dean of Auburn Engineering from 2012-22, recognized the importance of increased safety within the college’s research, teaching and outreach activities. According to Winful, Roberts advocated for a change in mindset and practice during these activities.

Winful, who was hired in 2018 in a newly established position, created the college’s safety council, recommended student organization safety liaisons and familiarized himself with researchers.

“While research, teaching and outreach remain at the core of the college’s mission, safety is at the forefront of all that we do. Safety is part of our culture,” said Mario Eden, dean of engineering. “The lengths our college has taken to advocate safety, and the buy-in received from our researchers, faculty and students, is worthy of this esteemed recognition.”

Mother Nature can wreak havoc at airports for those needing to fly, but how often do we think about how resilient the runways are after the weather takes a toll?

From left, Nam Tran, Benjamin Bowers, Jeff LaMondia and Suri Gatiganti

Benjamin Bowers, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, hopes to provide airports small and large under Federal Aviation Administration authority with a toolkit to assess the resilience of asphalt on airfield pavements.

resilience decision toolkit known as the Performance-based Resilience Evaluation Program (PREP), which was previously developed by Bowers and Jeff LaMondia, a CEE professor and team member.

Bowers is the principal investigator on a $1.25 million grant funded by the Federal Aviation Administration through the Airfield Pavement Technology Program cooperative agreement managed by the National Asphalt Pavement Association. The project is titled “Synthesis and State of Practice and Research Needs for Airfield Asphalt Pavement Resilience.”

Smooth and crack-free asphalt on a runway is essential to prevent significant delays and transportation issues, affecting not just vacationers and business travelers, but also freight deliveries and disaster relief supplies. This project utilizes a flexible

LaMondia and doctoral student Fernando Cordero have successfully applied the PREP framework in the past to evaluate flight operational delays caused by extreme rainstorm events, with funding from the Airport Cooperative Research Program.

Bowers and LaMondia are working on the project with Nam Tran, assistant director for the National Center for Asphalt Technology (NCAT); Suri Gatiganti, research engineer for NCAT; University of New Hampshire civil and environmental engineering professors Jo Sias and Eshan Dave; AECOM and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

ASEL director earns $336K grant to improve bridge maintenance Matthew Yarnold, director of the Advanced Structural Engineering Laboratory (ASEL) and an associate professor in civil and environmental engineering, is working to improve the long-term functionality of bridges in Alabama by focusing on how to improve deck slabs that connect bridge decks without using traditional deck joints.

Yarnold is the primary investigator (PI), with Anton Schindler, director of the Highway Research Center and Mountain Spirit Professor of civil and environmental engineering, serving as the co-PI. The project, “Development of Continuous Deck Slab Details for Alabama Bridges,” is funded by the Alabama Department

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Matthew Yarnold

of Transportation (ALDOT) with a total budget of $336,600.

Researchers at ASEL will assess an existing detail from ALDOT and seek opportunities for enhancement, with the goal of improving bridge performance throughout Alabama. If Yarnold’s team succeeds and ALDOT adopts their recommendations, these improvements are likely to be implemented in most of the future bridges constructed by ALDOT.

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HAPPENINGS

Senior in aerospace, biosystems awarded Astronaut Scholarship Foundation scholarship Ayden Kemp dreams of developing and maintaining life support systems for manned spaceflight so humanity can one day establish a sustainable human presence on the moon and Mars.

Kemp, a senior in the Honors College who is majoring in aerospace engineering and biosystems engineering with a bioprocess option, was awarded the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation (ASF) award to help fund and honor that dream.

Sixty-eight undergraduate students from 46 universities and colleges across the United States have been named to the ASF’s 2023 Class of Astronaut Scholars.

Much like Kemp, these exceptional students are pursuing degrees in science,

Ayden Kemp

Jose Vasconcelos

technology, engineering and math (STEM) and will each receive a scholarship of up to $15,000 in financial support.

CEE professor researched water resources in Israel

“The Astronaut Scholarship Foundation scholarship is important because it seeks to honor America’s best and brightest minds in STEM fields to help support them as they prepare to tackle the complex scientific and engineering challenges of the future,” Kemp said. “One of the main goals of the ASF is to maintain America’s status as a global leader in science and technology.”

ISE doctoral student presented Lean Engineering Award Minas Pantelidakis, a doctoral student in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, was recently named the 2023 JT Black Lean Engineering Student of the Year. Tom Devall, director of auto manufacturing initiatives for the department, nominated Pantelidakis for the award.

in the Tiger Motors Lab, commonly referred to as the LEGO Lab.

Pantelidakis has served as a graduate teaching assistant for the manufacturing systems engineering course since the fall of 2021 and has worked closely with students

“Minas has contributed his technical skills to the development of the LEGO Lab,” Devall said. “His work has helped improve the student experience for Lean Systems.”

From left, Tom Devall, Minas Pantelidakis and Konstantinos Mykoniatis

Jose Vasconcelos, associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, was one of 32 researchers selected by the Jewish National Fund-USA to travel to Israel for its 2023 Summer Faculty Fellowship Program.

Funded by the Jewish National Fund-USA’s Boruchin Center and individual donors, the tour is a fully paid intensive program for full-time academics from leading American universities.

Vasconcelos spent two weeks in May and June meeting Israeli professors with the same or similar research interests with the goal of developing collaborations, research projects, co-authoring articles and establishing exchange programs between faculty and students.

“My area of teaching and research is in water resources management, and Israel has been a world leader in this field due to the water scarcity in their region,” said Vasconcelos, whose primary focus is hydraulics and hydrology.

Listen to our podcasts with Ayden Kemp and Jose Vasconcelos at eng.auburn.edu/ginning

HAPPENINGS ONLINE

Visit our magazine online at eng.auburn.edu/magazine to read more of these stories.

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SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

HAPPENINGS

Auburn aerospace engineering well represented at AIAA Greater Huntsville Section awards

was named the Earl Pearce Professional of the Year.

Four Auburn Engineering students, two alumni and a faculty member earned key honors by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Greater Huntsville Section (GHS) at its annual awards dinner in May.

Aerospace engineering AIAA award winners

Holland began her pursuit of an aerospace engineering degree this fall and was named the 2023 Robert L. Sackheim Scholarship winner.

Colin Bamford, who earned a degree in aerospace engineering this spring, was named Undergraduate Student of the Year. Cody Shelton, who is pursuing a doctorate in aerospace engineering, was named Graduate Student of the Year.

Charles Smith, a rising sophomore in aerospace engineering, earned the 2022 Robert L. Sackheim Scholarship. Jordan

Kevin Albarado, who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in aerospace engineering in 2010 and 2016, is the Ed Pruett Young Professional of the Year.

Jayme Allgood, who earned a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering in 2009,

Auburn University leading SEC consortium to advance innovation in AI teaching, learning

“At Auburn, we work hard to deliver a world-class education in aerospace engineering and take great pride in our significant contributions to the aerospace profession, particularly in Huntsville,” said Brian Thurow, aerospace engineering department chair and the W. Allen and Martha Reed Professor. “We are delighted to see the recognition and support provided by the AIAA GHS to our alumni, who are clearly developing into leaders in the area, as well as our students who we expect to be leaders in the future.”

Professor of aerospace engineering and Francis Chair of Excellence Joe Majdalani serves as the GHS director of honors and awards.

Vini Nathan, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs. “While each institution plays a crucial role in developing and using such technologies, I am proud that Auburn is able to strategically lead this effort through our faculty’s expertise, curiosity and institutional infrastructure.”

A new Auburn University-designed course to assist faculty in implementing artificial intelligence (AI) into the classroom has been adopted by the Southeastern Conference (SEC) for use at its 14 institutions. The SEC is the first athletic conference to pledge a collective response to the growing role of AI in higher education.

faculty at its member institutions. Auburn is among several universities delivering pragmatic solutions to critical questions on how faculty can effectively integrate AI into their instruction and scholarship.

A member of the SEC Artificial Intelligence Consortium since 2022, Auburn’s contributions to the conference’s effort include expanding the availability of its course “Teaching with AI @ Auburn” to

“Auburn’s use of and experimentation with AI through normative and novel pedagogical approaches add to the wealth of knowledge that the SEC academic consortium continues to generate,” said

Now open to all SEC institutions, “Teaching with AI in the SEC” blends research advancements with constructive input from faculty and students. Covering key topics that include everything from AI basics to complex constructs and tools, the course’s eight virtual, in-depth modules support pedagogical practices and offer faculty hands-on experiences in creating assignments, understanding data applications and fostering critical conversations with students.

GOING BACK TO SCHOOL has never been easier or more convenient.

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HAPPENINGS

Researchers in chemical engineering part of NSFEPSCoR grant to reimagine sustainable development of plastic materials Mismanaged micro- and nano-plastics can threaten the environment and health.

Three researchers in Auburn University’s Department of Chemical Engineering — Assistant Professor Symone Alexander, Department Chair Selen Cremaschi, and Associate Professor Zhihua Jiang — offer solutions that could reimagine the sustainable development of plastic materials, address plastic waste challenges and their climate/health impacts and build community climate resilience while advancing social and environmental justice in Mississippi and Alabama.

Their multi-disciplinary study, “Advancing Social and Environmental Equity through Plastics Research: Education, Innovation and Inclusion” (ASPIRE), is a collaborative effort with researchers from the University of Southern Mississippi, and part of a four-year, $4 million National Science Foundation (NSF)-Department of Energy Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (DOE EPSCoR) R-II Track-2 grant. EPSCoR R-II Track-2 grants are awarded to researchers looking

From left, Zhihua Jiang, Symone Alexander and Selen Cremaschi

to advance climate change research and resilience capacity to expand opportunities for disproportionately affected communities.

“We’ve heard of islands of trash in the ocean, but what we don’t see are microand nano-plastics,” said Alexander, the principal investigator. “Those are the very small particles that can easily be ingested by fish and marine animals, which we, as humans, ingest. This can lead to bioaccumulation that can cause other health issues which aren’t well studied.”

ASPIRE will develop advanced detection methods to analyze microplastic contamination in field and aquaculture samples, utilize novel methods to extend the lifespan and improve the performance of recycled products for sustained use, and design recyclable polymer thermosets using sustainable, bio-derived building blocks to establish chemistry-structureproperty relationships.

Shiqiang Zou, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering (CEE) and Michael Perez, associate professor in CEE, are collaborating with the University of South Alabama on a three-year, $1.3 million project to upgrade geotextiles to filter excessive nutrients from stormwater runoff into the Gulf Coast ecosystem. Auburn

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Electrical engineering junior named chief of staff for Students of Southern Company Jesús Ruelas Barragan, a junior studying electrical engineering, was named chief of staff for the Students of Southern Company, an employee resource within Southern Company. In that position, he oversees five other executive board members within Students of Southern Company and more than 70 co-op students and interns. He also coordinates community service, social and site tour events.

Barragan moved to the United States from Michoacan, Mexico, at 3 years old and has lived with his family in the Auburn area since he was 11.

“I have dreamed of attending Auburn University since the first day I locked eyes on Samford Lawn,” Barragan said.

Barragan is not only the first engineer in his family, he’s the first to attend college.

Stormwater runoff researchers part of $1.3M grant to safeguard Gulf Coast ecosystem Stormwater runoff from urbanized areas flows directly into streams, creeks, rivers, lakes and oceans, carrying excessive pollutants, including nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus.

Jesús Ruelas Barragan

“As a first-generation college student, I thought the co-op program would be a great first step into understanding the industry side of engineering prior to graduation,” he said.

From left, Shiqiang Zou and Michael Perez

University has been awarded $420,000 as part of the grant. Other collaborators include Wake Forest University and Mobile Baykeeper.

The project, “Non-woven bio-plastic-based hybrid geotextile for urban stormwater phosphorus management,” is sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency.

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Barragan started out as a co-op student his first year at Auburn after learning about the opportunity while visiting campus during E-Day. He recently worked his second coop rotation, serving as the substation protection and control test engineer for Georgia Power. He started with Georgia Power in the summer of 2022 as a distribution engineer.

HAPPENINGS

Two Auburn Engineering students receive National Science Foundation Fellowships Four Auburn University undergraduate students, including two Auburn Engineering students, won National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowships (GRFP) for graduate study.

The purpose of the fellowship program is to help ensure the vitality and diversity of the scientific and engineering workforce in the United States.

Each fellowship consists of three years of support accessible over a five-year period.

The NSF provides a stipend of $34,000 to the fellow and a cost-of-education allowance of $12,000 to the degreegranting institution.

“We are especially happy to see a continuation of Auburn students being

From left, Katie Leonard and Peter Abraham

awarded this prestigious fellowship,” said Tiffany Sippial, director of the Auburn University Honors College. “The NSF GRFP recognizes student potential for significant achievements in science and engineering research, and these awards are a perfect fit for the work being done at Auburn University.”

A native of Auburn and a Goldwater Scholar, Peter Abraham will graduate with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering and a minor in computer science. His NSFfunded research project, “Understanding Macrophage Phenotype in Obesity-linked Colorectal Cancer using Tissue-Engineered Models,” involves investigating a cell in the body called the macrophage.

The following engineering students were selected as NSF GRFP recipients for 2023: Katie Leonard graduated in May with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering and minors in dance and sports coaching from the Samuel Ginn College of

Materials engineering grad student earns prestigious sustainability fellowship The U.S. government wants to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, plus a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035 via investing in renewable energy technologies such as solar and wind microgrid systems.

Yaqub Adediji is going to help them do it. The second-year doctoral student in materials engineering was recently tapped for the Environmental Defense Fund’s Climate Corps Fellowship, an innovative program aimed at cultivating the next generation of sustainability professionals.

Adediji, whose research focuses on

Engineering and the College of Education, respectively. Leonard’s research is focused on drug delivery. She studies different therapeutic mechanisms to deliver drugs, such as chemotherapies. The goal of her research is to increase circulation time while mitigating the side effects of the drug.

Listen to our podcast with Katie Leonard and Peter Abraham at eng.auburn.edu/ginning

fossil-fuel based systems to clean energy sources, thereby reducing greenhouse gas emissions and addressing the urgent challenges of climate change in the United States,” Adediji said.

Yaqub Adediji

developing non-destructive corrosion monitoring and detection systems in aerospace and renewable energy systems, was selected for the fellowship from more than 1,200 applicants.

“In this fellowship, I will be helping cities, companies and households transition from

“Over the summer, I worked with Technimark Inc., a global leader and manufacturer of high-value injectionmolded packaging materials and components serving the consumer packaging, healthcare and industrial markets to screen their supply and value chain for opportunities for transitioning to clean energy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” he added.

Listen to our podcasts with Symone Alexander, Shiqiang Zou and Michael Perez at eng.auburn.edu/ginning

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HAPPENINGS

Student in aerospace engineering earns national honor society accolades Elizabeth Weidl, a senior in aerospace engineering, was the south central region winner and national runner-up for the Sigma Gamma Tau (national aerospace honor society) Undergraduate Award.

Meredith Reid

Professor in ECE leading MRI study that explores PTSD biomarkers in older adults Much post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) research has been dedicated to children and young adults. But what about senior citizens? Meredith Reid, assistant professor in electrical and computer engineering, will soon add this missing piece to the puzzle.

Reid’s proposed research, “In vivo assessment of glutamate in older adults with post-traumatic stress disorder: a 7T magnetic resonance spectroscopy study,” in conjunction with the Auburn University Neuroimaging Center, will utilize brain scans of 40 adults 50 years and older to measure glutamate — the brain’s major excitatory neurotransmitter necessary for cognitive function. Studies associate PTSD with glutamatergic dysfunction, Reid said.

The proposal is sponsored by the Center for Clinical and Translational Science.

“Given the evidence that glutamate decreases with age and that aging is accelerated with PTSD, the central hypothesis motivating this research is that aging differently affects glutamate levels in people with PTSD,” Reid said. “If we can better understand the pathophysiology of what is happening with older adults, then we can identify biomarkers that could allow us to perhaps develop medications for that population. There are not many medications specifically for PTSD right now. Some of those medications are used for depression and/or anxiety. If we could identify glutamate as a biomarker, then drug companies could develop those medications that target the glutamate system.”

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“This means a great deal to me because I was already honored to be a part of Sigma Gamma Tau, but even more now that they chose me to represent Auburn University,” said Weidl, who spent the summer at Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation in Savannah, Georgia, as a systems safety intern. “I work very hard because I believe college is a privilege and learning something new every day is a joy not many

Elizabeth Weidl

people get to experience. I was ecstatic to be the regional winner and couldn’t believe I was national runner-up. It feels amazing because I know all the hard work is paying off.”

Sigma Gamma Tau Undergraduate Award entries are judged on a variety of criteria, including GPA, projects, jobs, volunteer work, extra-curricular activity and career goals.

CPAC gives used 3D printing filament new life through recycling program As the saying goes: reduce, reuse, recycle.

But what does that mean in the world of 3D printing?

From left, Maggie Nelson and Yoorae Noh extrude recycled filament and feed it into a new spool

The Center for Polymers and Advanced Composites (CPAC) has plans to find out with a newly launched 3D printing filament recycling program titled “ReMake,” launched in conjunction with the Auburn University Waste Reduction and Recycling Department.

Teel approached Bryan Beckingham, CPAC director and associate professor of chemical engineering, with the idea of recycling the excess 3D printing filament and for Beckingham, the answer was obvious.

There are many laboratories across the Auburn University campus utilizing additive manufacturing or 3D printing for various research and instructional purposes.

The process generates a sizable amount of waste material that is ripe for reuse.

“Nearly all materials on campus that go into the waste and recycling bins are trucked off campus for disposal and processing,” said Jesse Teel, coordinator of waste reduction and recycling on campus.

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“Through ReMake, CPAC is helping breathe new life into this material that was previously being discarded,” he said. “The recycled material isn’t as high quality as new filament, but we are in the process of studying the mechanical properties of the recycled filament in comparison to new filament to identify the best uses for this product.”

HAPPENINGS

Wesley Lowman

ME professor earns prestigious award for heat transfer research Mehmet Arik, associate professor of mechanical engineering, recently received the 2022 Hartnett-Irvine Award from the International Centre for Heat and Mass Transfer (ICHMT).

Arik was presented the award at the International Heat Transfer Conference in Cape Town, South Africa, for his research presented in a paper titled “Effect of Subcooling and Pressure over Nucleate Pool Boiling on Micro Drilled Surfaces.”

The paper was co-authored with Mete Budakli and Tolga Emir, both from Özyegin University.

“This is a great feeling, and I am proud of my team including graduate and undergraduate students as well as postdocs in my lab,” Arik said. “This also energizes us to tackle harder problems and work together with the broader science community to execute groundbreaking research.”

The Hartnett-Irvine Award is given annually to the best conference paper on the topic of heat and mass transfer.

It was established to honor the lives and memory of ICHMT founders James P. Hartnett and Thomas F. Irvine and aims to recognize outstanding leaders in the fields of energy resources and heat and mass transfer research.

“This award establishes the quality and contributions of our research to the heat transfer community. It is accepted as the Olympics of heat transfer research,” Arik said.

Student in CSSE part of Auburn FMA’s Global Case Competition winning team Wesley Lowman, a junior in computer science and software engineering from Decatur, was part of a four-student team to win the 2023 Global Case Competition — one of the most prestigious studentorganized case competitions in the world.

Lowman, who is also majoring in finance, was joined by Financial Management Association (FMA) team members Jameson Fecteau, Jack Perkins and Lauren Rutherford, to beat out more than 175 collegiate teams for first place and $10,000 in the Harvard University event.

Teams were presented with the hypothetical case of multinational technology firm Siemens purchasing Vestas, a wind turbine company. After an initial round of judging, the top 10 teams had three weeks to prepare a 75-page deck discussing the feasibility of the transaction, as well as outlining a possible alternative acquisition.

Additionally, each group was tasked with analyzing industry research to perform valuations that detailed the financial implications of alternative deals.

“Our students went above and beyond in their analysis,” said Tracy Richard, director of the Harbert College of Business’ Integrated Financial Leadership Program and FMA faculty advisor. “They rejected the proposed acquisition, and then did extensive research to propose an alternative acquisition that would not only be accretive but would align with Siemens’ forward-looking strategy.”

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From left, Rajan Bhandari, Anthony Comer, Assistant Professor Imon Chakraborty and Stefanus Harris Putra.

Vehicle Systems, Dynamics, and Design Laboratory team wins Vertical Flight Society international competition Three aerospace engineering graduate students in Imon Chakraborty’s Vehicle Systems, Dynamics, and Design Laboratory took first place in the Vertical Flight Society’s Design-Build-Vertical Flight 2023 Student Competition final round in June in Churchville, Maryland.

The event was hosted by SURVICE Engineering’s Applied Technology Operation at the Harford County (Maryland) Airport. The University of Maryland took second place, while McGill University from Quebec, Canada, was third.

Anthony Comer, Rajan Bhandari and Stefanus Harris Putra designed, built and flew a vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft manually and autonomously — and were the only team to complete both mission tasks. Teams were challenged to build VTOL aircraft weighing no more than 20 pounds and capable of carrying payloads of at least two pounds, with sufficient endurance to complete the competition requirements.

Listen to our podcast with Wesley Lowman at eng.auburn.edu/ginning

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FEATURES

/// B Y A U S T I N P H I L L I P S

NEW BEGINNINGS Mario Eden, who previously served as the chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering, was named as the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering’s 14th dean in May

F E A T U R E S /// N E W B E G I N N I N G S

El-Halwagi for a nine-month term, and then returned for another two semesters as a visiting instructor.

Mario Eden’s journey to become the dean of Auburn University’s Samuel Ginn College of Engineering has been a long one.

Twenty-two years and 4,677 miles, to be exact.

While studying at the Technical University of Denmark, Eden was intrigued by the writings and research of a faculty member at a university called Auburn.

“I never looked back,” said Eden, who was named as the college’s 14th dean in May and also serves as the Joe T. and Billie Carole McMillan Professor.

While serving as a visiting instructor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, a tenure-track faculty position opened up.

“This was the only place I applied,” Eden said. “This was the job I wanted.”

He got the job, and started to dream big even back then.

So, as part of the doctoral requirements in Denmark, Eden made the trek to Auburn in 2001 to learn from former professor Mahmoud

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“The potential the department had was really exciting. We were

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F E AT U R E S

Hundreds of faculty, staff, administrators and fellow deans joined the college to welcome Dean Mario Eden to his new role. From left, Gregg Newschwander, dean of the College of Nursing; Vini Nathan, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs; Eden; President Chris Roberts; Jason Hicks, dean of the College of Liberal Arts; Leigh Ann Ross, dean of the Harrison College of Pharmacy; and Calvin Johnson, dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine.

getting ready to change what we wanted to be about and who we wanted to be,” said Eden, who served as an assistant professor, associate professor and full professor in the department. “I wanted to be part of that. I wanted to put my fingerprint on that. You could actually influence things and I wanted to be in an environment where I could enjoy my colleagues’ success.”

“

Auburn has provided everything that I ever needed. It doesn’t get any better than this.

Fast forward a few years and Eden was named as chair of the department, a role he held from 2012-23.

“As a faculty member, I had access to fantastic students who advanced my research program in ways that I never even thought of when I first started. As a department chair, I had the best faculty, the best staff and the best students,” Eden said. “Having the opportunity to serve the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering and the Department of Chemical Engineering in that role was truly a

”

dream come true and an honor. The relationships I made with my colleagues and students are something I will treasure forever.”

As the chemical engineering department chair, Eden led the department to its highest U.S. News & World Report Graduate

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F E A T U R E S /// N E W B E G I N N I N G S

Eden has served as an assistant professor, associate professor, professor and as chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering during his tenure at Auburn.

Program ranking ever; increased undergraduate enrollment to record numbers with incoming freshmen achieving ACT scores of 30 or higher for 11 consecutive years; successfully added 17 tenuretrack faculty members and two full-time lecturers during the past 10 years, including the department achieving the highest percentage of female full professors among any chemical engineering department in the country; increased philanthropic support of the program by millions of dollars; and successfully led the department through the national accreditation process in 2016 and 2022.

So, when the college’s former dean and former chemical engineering department chair, Chris Roberts, was selected as the university’s 21st president, Eden knew the time was right for him to take the next step in an effort to continue to push Auburn Engineering forward in the 21st century.

In May 2023, Eden was selected as the college’s dean following an extensive interview and public process that included a diverse pool of nearly 60 applicants from some of the nation’s most premier and highly ranked engineering institutions.

“The quality of applicants and applications we received from across the country was a testimony to the stature of the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering,” said Vini Nathan, Auburn University provost and senior vice president for academic affairs. “After

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carefully reviewing feedback from the search committee, faculty, staff, students, alumni and Auburn leadership, it was apparent that Dr. Eden was the person we needed leading the College of Engineering forward. I am confident that, through his leadership, he will help elevate the college to become one of the preeminent engineering institutions in the country.”

Eden earned master’s and doctoral degrees in chemical engineering from the Technical University of Denmark in 1999 and 2003, respectively.

In addition to his tenure as a professor and department chair, he also served a term as acting director of the Alabama Center for Paper and Bioresource Engineering from 2014-16.

His expertise and research interests center on process systems engineering and computer-aided process engineering; process simulation, design, integration and optimization; and product and molecular synthesis/design. Eden has established a strong record of scholarly productivity and academic achievement during his career including more than 175 refereed publications and nearly 450 invited talks and conference presentations. He has secured more than $29 million in extramural grants and contracts as principal investigator (PI) or co-PI from a wide range of federal and industrial sources.

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F E AT U R E S

While Eden gets excited about the endless opportunities for Auburn Engineering into the future, the part of the job as dean that he looks forward to most is working with the people who make up this storied college.

“When you look around the nation at the premier institutions, Auburn has many of the same qualities — if not better — than those of our peers. And that’s due, in large part, to the people who serve this great university day in and day out,” Eden said. “While the innovative research of one faculty member caught my attention many miles away, and led me to this wonderful place, it was the people who cemented that this was where I wanted to be. This is home.

“Every day I’m amazed at the talent — students, faculty and staff — we have here, and then I look at the impact our graduates are making around the globe, and it takes my breath away. I’m so blessed to have this moment in time to work with so many phenomenal individuals who make up this amazing place. The Auburn Family is real.”

Twenty-two years and 4,677 miles later, he can’t imagine being elsewhere.

“Auburn has provided everything that I ever needed. It doesn’t get

any better than this,” Eden said. “I am humbled at this opportunity to take Auburn Engineering to the next level. I guarantee you that I am going to work tirelessly, every day, to ensure that our students are provided with the best student-centered engineering experience in America.”

Listen to our podcast with Mario Eden at eng.auburn.edu/ginning

SCAN ME!

View the online video about Meet Mario

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FEATURES

/// B Y J E R E M Y H E N D E R S O N

The BURCHES of AUBURN

Mechanical engineering senior lecturer Tom Burch and his son, Hunter, who serves as an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, are believed to be the first father-son faculty pair at the same time in the college’s history

FEATURES /// B U R C H E S This is an Auburn story. It starts in 1974 at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa.

There he was, 17-year-old Tom Burch from tiny Moulton, Alabama, walking around an engineering building in Tuscaloosa — it was a recruitment day type thing — pondering the course of his life. As far as he knew, Tom had never met an engineer. But folks began telling him he might make a good one some day, that his natural abilities — he could fix any machine on the neighbor’s cattle farm he worked — seemed aligned with that sort of thing.

Of course, that meant going to college, which wasn’t exactly a tradition for graduating seniors at Lawrence County High School at the time.

“That just wasn’t really expected,” Tom said.

In 10th grade, he signed up for the HVAC course his dad taught.

High school in the morning, technical school in the afternoon.

Graduate, get a job. To Tom, it seemed like a plan. To his dad, it didn’t. If Tom wanted to learn air conditioning and refrigerator repair, his dad told him he’d be happy to teach him. But only after he’d taken all the math and science he could, only after a mind and hands like his had weighed all their options.

Tom Burch, center, as pictured in the 1979 Glomerata, his senior year at Auburn.

Burch earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from Auburn, as well as a doctorate from LSU in the same discipline. He has taught mechanical engineering at his alma mater since 1992.

“That’s when,” Tom said, “I started thinking I might go to college.”

Just not the one he was touring two years later.

“They had some display — a water faucet hanging in the air with two wires and water running out. But what they really had was a glass tube running up the middle and water running back down over the glass tube. It was a trick display. They made out like they were condensing water out of the air and they thought I’d be stupid enough to buy it,” he said.

He didn’t buy it.

Tom started at Auburn University that fall. He declared mechanical engineering. It was hard work. He loved it.

He got a job every break, saved everything, and to his dad’s delight, paid every dime of tuition himself.

Four and a half years later, Tom was a mechanical engineer. He was fluent in the language of the principles he’d grown up grasping instinctively, now with a knack for the higher level stuff. His professors took notice.

When Glenn Maples learned that the only student to get an A on his thermodynamics of power systems final planned to immediately enter the workforce, he told him to think again.

“Dr. Maples told me I was going to grad school,” Tom said. “He

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said ‘we’re going to hire you to work on a Department of Energy contract. You can take one course a quarter, get your student debt paid off and finish up your master’s.’”

Tom pinched himself.

“Coming from my background… well, it took me a while to realize I was good enough to compete,” he said.

Auburn, he said, gave him that confidence — and opportunities to use it. Maples, as it turned out, owned an energy conservation consulting business with mechanical engineering professor David Dyer. They began farming out some of the work to Tom. It paid well.

He started making enough to start thinking long term about an Auburn graphic design student he’d met named Patti. Regionally, nationally, even internationally, Tom started making a name for himself. Want an energy audit your company could really use?

There was an Auburn man who’d do you right.

Things went according to plan. He earned money. He earned his master’s. Then it happened all over again.

Maples told his brother, an engineering professor at LSU, that they ought to give one of their Alumni Federation Fellowships to the Burch boy he had working for him.

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

F E AT U R E S That was 31 years ago. He’s loved every second of it. Or at least every second of the good stuff.

The teaching — for Tom, that’s where it’s at. No neckties. Greasy hands. The real world. The practical world.

“A lot of times, in other places, anything practical is frowned upon,” Tom said. “Writing papers, doing fundamental research — that’s not enjoyable to me. But I very much enjoyed the teaching. I think, for some students, I’m pretty good at it. I’m pretty good for them.”

The decades, he said, have taken a toll on the next generation in the fundamentals department. And that, more than ever, is where Tom feels like he’s made a difference. Want to learn about quantum mechanics? Fine. First, take his fluids class and learn exactly how a hot water heater works.

Or go with him to Bolivia.

Tom Burch, senior lecturer in mechanical engineering, poses with a Bolivian family during a 2016 trip to Bolivia with the Auburn chapter of Engineers Without Borders. Burch has volunteered with the organization in various capacities since 2010.

Before he knew it, Tom, former aspiring HVAC technician, was Dr. Tom Burch.

Then Maples and Dyer made him an offer — bring that doctorate back to town, we’ll make you a partner. That sounded fine. Business was booming. He and Patti, knot tied, were planning to start a family. Tom had said yes to Auburn for 15 years.

That’s actually what’s meant the most over the years, he says — his advising role with Auburn’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders (EWB). There’s nothing more demonstrative of the Auburn Creed — and Tom’s loved the Creed “since before I even knew what it was” — than EWB. You can’t condense clean water out of thin air with a couple of random wires stuck to a Tuscaloosa spigot.

But you can get it down a Bolivian mountain — if you know the fundamentals, and how to apply them. The looks on the faces of the families they help? That’s better than a 4.0.

“You gain a lot of insight into physical principles by physically working with things,” Tom said. “I had a group of EWB students at my house the other day testing for an irrigation system we wanted to build in Bolivia, and there was a girl who said ‘this is the first time I’ve ever held a tool in my life.’”

No reason to stop now.

Thanks to Tom, it won’t be the last.

No reason to stop ever.

That’s what he likes to imagine as his legacy — students with the knowledge and skills to get the job done. Students like Hunter Burch.

THE PRACTICAL-MINDED PROFESSOR Teaching was never really mechanical engineering senior lecturer Tom Burch’s intention. It just happened. It was 1990 or so. Tom picked up the phone. It was John Goodling, head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

PRUDENTIA SIMPLICITATE

“He’d heard I was back,” Tom said. “He said ‘we need some help teaching a thermo class.’”

Electrical and computer engineering assistant professor Hunter Burch, a 2014 electrical and computer engineering graduate who got an A in Tom Burch’s thermodynamics class, has a funny theory about how things all worked out. But he’s not entirely joking.

Tom hesitated; he traveled a lot. Goodling kept pressing — they’d work around his schedule. Just try it.

One of his many hobbies? Genealogy. He’s traced the Burch name back to the Saxons, found the family heraldry.

One quarter turned into two. One course turned into two.

Somehow along the way — he’s still not sure how — he became an Auburn Engineering faculty member.

The family motto? “Prudentia Simplicitate.”

“Basically, it translates to ‘simply prudent,’” Hunter said.

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FEATURES /// B U R C H E S Prudent: Wise in practical affairs. The first line of the Auburn Creed, basically.

Not that all Burch family affairs were perfectly practical.

It’s hard for Hunter to keep track of how many crazy projects he and his younger brothers Harrison, ’17 electrical and computer engineering, and Hayden, ’22 mechanical engineering, did with dad growing up. After fixing things around the house and changing brake pads, they’d get to the fun stuff that expanded Hunter’s appreciation for the possible. They never sucked water from the air with wires. But a leaf blower-powered hoverboard, a chainsawpowered bike? Sure. They turned a disposable camera into a taser, built a steam engine.

“Oh,” Hunter said, “and we made a snow machine.”

In March 2020, he heard that his dad, his brother Hayden and one of his dad’s former students, mechanical engineering assistant professor Michael Zabala, spent the first weeks of COVID-19 in the garage converting a CPAP machine into a working ventilator as a pandemic mitigation effort. To Hunter, it sounded like just another Saturday on Springwood Drive.

Hunter Burch, a 2014 electrical and computer engineering graduate and this year’s Outstanding Faculty Member for the Department and Electrical and Computer Engineering, is the younger half of Auburn Engineering’s first fatherson faculty colleagues.

“We’d have an idea,” Hunter said, “and dad would say, ‘OK, how do we do it?’”

Hunter takes the same practical approach in class, but don’t suggest electromagnetics isn’t practical. He doesn’t like that.

“I want my students to look at the world how dad taught me and apply it to something that’s much less tangible,” Hunter said. “To take that very mechanical engineering mindset of this is a practical, physical world, but apply it to a more theoretical field. Maybe you can’t grab it and shake it and make it tell you what it’s doing, but can you build an antenna and say ‘if the field is doing what I think it’s doing, then here’s what I’ll get out of this antenna’?”

The approach seems to be working. Back in April, Hunter was named Outstanding Faculty Member in Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), in his first semester as a tenure-track professor.

It was a big day. Even bigger when Auburn University President Chris Roberts walked up to shake his hand at the awards reception.

Plenty of places talked about excellence, he said; none set the pursuit of it in stone. The Creed, Roberts said, was “the real differentiator” for Auburn. It was what earned Auburn the right to dream big.

Hunter couldn’t give a bigger “amen.”

When he heard about the opportunity in Gakona, Alaska, for example, he didn’t hesitate. Most folks taking advantage of the resources at the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program are engineers at the huge national labs, or professors and graduate students from some of the blueblood engineering schools. Hunter signed up an undergraduate student who was interested in heating up the ionosphere’s plasma with huge radio waves, made the trip, slapped Auburn’s name on the reservation board in the middle of the big boys, and even carved “War Eagle” into the radio spectrum — spectrum painting they call it — as an exclamation point.

The day before, Roberts, former dean of engineering, had been installed as the university’s new president at the Gogue Performing Arts Center. You could hear a pin drop as Roberts articulated his vision for the university, talking about family, hard work, the human touch — Creed stuff.

“Auburn shouldn’t have a mindset of, ‘oh well, we’re just Auburn.’

We should be — and will be — competing on the world stage,” Hunter said. “The academic world should be aware of that.”

With anyone else, it might have sounded cliche. Not with Roberts.

The Creed is what convinced Roberts to accept the chemical engineering faculty position in the first place 20 years earlier.

“At the reception, I told Dr. Roberts that I was proud of him,” Hunter said. “Then he told me he was pretty sure me and dad were the first father-son teaching team in the college’s history.”

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Samford Hall couldn’t have put it in any better.

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

F E AT U R E S “Lloyd Riggs just walked into my office and told me he was retiring,” Nelms said. “Let’s talk.”

NO PLACE LIKE HOME “Dr. Burch the Elder and Dr. Burch the Younger.” That’s what Hunter dubbed them his first history-making day on the job in April 2022 partly as a joke, partly to help the students they now share.

“Coming back really almost felt like destiny, like I was claiming an inheritance, that this was set apart for me,” Hunter said. “Almost as if dad held it for me until I could grow up and come claim it. It’s not as if he got me the job — it’s like he did all the things that led me to be able to claim that role. Everything I want out of life, it’s here at Auburn.”

Tom feels the same.

From left, Hunter Burch, assistant professor in electrical and computer engineering and Taylor Lindley, a senior in wireless engineering, spent two weeks in August 2023 studying properties and behavior of the upper atmosphere at the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program in Gakona, Alaska.

As if returning to Auburn hadn’t felt charmed enough for Hunter.

He’d gone to the University of Florida for his master’s degree and doctorate, traveled the world, Antarctica included (twice) — the poles are pretty good for electromagnetic experiments — and planned to make his mark in the field in… San Francisco maybe?

Maybe Huntsville? Anywhere but the hometown.

But as dissertation day approached, so did — somehow — the feeling.

“The important things that have happened in my life — I didn’t make them happen. But I was in the right place for them to happen,” Tom said “So, if you want to call this an Auburn story… well, it is an Auburn story.”

Could it have been told somewhere else, though? Could it have been told at another school?

Hunter is close to saying no; that’s how strongly he believes Auburn is special in ways other places aren’t, in a way you have to experience to understand.

Tom is more diplomatic. He supposes there are other schools that can get in your blood so thoroughly you commit your life to the place and pass the same devotion on to your sons, a place that just won’t let you or your family go. Technically, he supposes it’s possible.

His dad told him it might happen — that it had certainly happened to him. Eighteen years in Moulton. Eight in Baton Rouge. The rest at Home. Hunter knew the story. And suddenly he felt like he was living the sequel.

But what Tom will say is this — as far as the Burches go, he knows one place it absolutely couldn’t have been.

Maybe it was the new dad in him, the first-hand knowledge that he and his Auburn High School sweetheart turned wife, Margaret, couldn’t ask for a better place to raise their son, John Thomas.

“Yeah, that faucet thing just ticked me off,” Tom said.

Whatever the reason, when he saw an ECE opening at his alma mater, he reached out. Just to see. Just to say he had. Department Chair Mark Nelms said he was happy to hear from him, but the position was for someone specializing in controls. Oh well. If by chance something in electromagnetics opened up, he’d let him know.

Half an hour later, Hunter’s phone buzzed.

He looks off and shakes his head.

Listen to our podcast with Tom Burch and Hunter Burch at eng.auburn.edu/ginning

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F E A T U R E S /// B Y K A R E N H U N L E Y & C A R L A N E L S O N

BETTER

TOGETHER

Industry partnerships benefit Auburn Engineering, students and companies

F E A T U R E S /// B E T T E R T O G E T H E R Mention the year 2020, and most people will have flashbacks to face coverings, apocalyptic-like emptiness in public settings and of course, the great toilet paper wars.

But even as the COVID-19 pandemic slowed or halted many business operations, the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering quietly set into motion a string of exciting new partnerships to grow its graduate program enrollment and further strengthen corporate relations.

Auburn Engineering signed an agreement in spring 2020 with Radiance Technologies in Huntsville to establish its first-ever educational partnership, allowing Radiance employees to earn master’s degrees online while continuing their current career paths.

Eight employees initially signed on to earn a Master of Engineering Management degree as cohorts, meaning they take the same courses at the same time.

“Cohort education is valuable for all involved parties,” said John Evans, professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering who served as chair of the department when the

partnership was established. “From the perspective of students, it’s easier to start your graduate education with someone you know — you aren’t jumping off the cliff by yourself. From our perspective in the department, it expands our programs and improves the performance of our students.”

Evans was instrumental in developing a cohort instructional model and getting the pilot cohort off the ground. With the help of Engineering Online and Continuing Education, seven other departments in the college agreed to participate in similar agreements by 2023.

Auburn Engineering now has educational partnerships with seven companies: Radiance, Leidos, PeopleTec Inc., Jacobs Engineering Group, Defense Acquisition University (DAU), Boeing and Honda Manufacturing of Alabama.

Employees at Leidos, PeopleTec, Jacobs and DAU who meet the application requirements can choose to pursue graduate degrees fully online in the departments of industrial and systems, aerospace, mechanical, computer science and software, chemical, civil and environmental and electrical and computer engineering. They can

Radiance Technologies was the first company to establish a cohort partnership with the College of Engineering in 2020. Nine employees have graduated with a master’s degree in engineering management.

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SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

F E AT U R E S also apply to the interdisciplinary master’s of engineering program, which is tailored to fit each student’s specific background and career goals.

The Radiance partnership has expanded to offer the master’s of science in industrial and systems engineering degree to interested employees.

The agreement with Honda — formed in summer 2023 — is exclusive to the four graduate certificate programs offered through industrial and systems engineering.

Stephen Woodry, quality leader for the Alabama Honda facility, said the certificates offer a “comprehensive curriculum that will provide our associates with the knowledge and skills they need to continue to grow and enhance their skills in an area they are passionate about.”

Honda employees may also use the credits they earn through certificate programs toward master’s degrees.

Stephen Schnelle, an electrical engineer at Radiance, graduated

with a master’s of engineering management degree in December 2021. He was the cohort program’s first graduate.

“Given that I already had a research-based technical master’s, I primarily saw it as an opportunity to develop some of the softer skills I realized I was lacking,” Schnelle said. “Overall, given the convenience of the degree and the experience I gained, I think it was a great experience.”

Currently, 42 employees are pursuing Auburn Engineering degrees or certificates through one of these seven partnerships, making up 16% of online graduate student enrollment.

Radiance has had the most students since 2020 with 15, and nine have completed the program. Jamie Jones, director of Radiance University (the continuing education unit of Radiance), said the partnership has been a positive experience that has challenged their employees academically and helped them reach professional milestones.

“Radiance must continually invest in our talent pipeline to build corporate capability to ensure our customers have the best

Honda Manufacturing of Alabama is the most recent company to create a cohort partnership with the College of Engineering. Fourteen Honda employees are currently pursuing graduate certificates through the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering.

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F E A T U R E S /// B E T T E R T O G E T H E R minds solving their toughest problems,” Jones said. “Through our partnership with Auburn, we can invest in employee-owners and customers simultaneously.

“The professors and staff at Auburn are always ready to participate in collaborative efforts that advance the engineering discipline, our employee-owners’ experience and the success of our partnership,” she added.

LuAnn Carpenter, director of student program assessment and administration for the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, assists in recruiting companies for educational partnerships/cohorts.

“The companies benefit by building or strengthening their relationship with Auburn University,” Carpenter said. “For example, one of the companies has included leadership training from the Harbert College of Business for its cohort students.

The Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering benefits because the partnerships facilitate the recruitment of very highquality graduate students for our online programs.”

Educational partnerships also serve as an outreach opportunity to build relationships with industry, Carpenter added.

“One company has provided multiple senior design (capstone) projects for our senior students,” she said. “The students also benefit because this program simplifies and streamlines the admission and advising processes. Being part of a company cohort also increases student retention, performance and satisfaction.”

For companies such as Boeing and Jacobs, which have multiple locations, the agreement with Auburn applies to employees at all sites.

For Jacobs, that means more than 55,000 employees at 400 offices benefit.

“This partnership not only allows our employees to advance their own careers but also adds value to those employees from our perspective, as they develop new technical and professional skills,” said Scott Jernigan, project manager at Jacobs in Pensacola, Florida.

Educational partnerships offer employers the ability to help their employees grow throughout their careers.

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SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

F E AT U R E S Employees who successfully complete all course requirements for their program receive either a full or partial tuition reimbursement from their company, with Auburn offering a 10% tuition discount.

This employer support, along with the support from fellow coworkers who take advantage of the partnership, is the encouragement many working engineers such as Tasha Wiley need to go back to school and continue to advance their careers.

“I know that PeopleTec made an investment in the company and its future, but they also made a huge investment in my future and my career,” said Wiley, software development manager and quality assurance manager at PeopleTec. Wiley, part of the master’s of engineering management cohort, said the program aligns with the technical aspects of her current roles and allows her to encourage projects and help continually improve processes.

Along with fellow students at PeopleTec and other partner companies, Wiley has taken advantage of the new learning space

available to cohort members at the Auburn University Research and Innovation Campus in Huntsville.

Students can use the space for quiet test-taking or meet as a group to watch lectures and study together.

Engineering Online and the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering are continuing to work together to recruit companies to form educational partnerships.

“It’s a win-win for our college and the students,” said Mario Eden, dean of engineering. “Our faculty and students benefit from the inclusion of experienced professionals in our virtual classrooms, as they can contribute real-world scenarios in class discussions. As for the student-employees, the knowledge and problem-solving skills gained through their graduate program are invaluable as they advance in their careers.”

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College of Engineering faculty and staff meet frequently with cohort companies and employees to establish personal relationships, answer questions and gain feedback on how to make the program as successful as possible.

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IT’S MY JOB BY

BETHANY GILES

COREY COOPER ’05

The mission was important to us because we didn’t just want to build a trinket or another product. We wanted to build an experiential brand, a brand that had soul and emotion. We wanted to package up the Florida lifestyle and create a global community of enthusiasts that shared in our same passion for spending time on the water with family and friends.

Mechanical Engineering BOTE Founder

What is BOTE, and what sets you apart in the watersports industry?

BOTE is our passion. It’s a brand embodiment of all the things that my wife, Magda, myself and a special group of people with unique talents found interesting enough to dedicate a decade plus of sweat equity into building. Put more directly in product and business terms, it is a watersports lifestyle brand with products that span from standup paddle boards to kayaks to water floats.

Our mission at BOTE is “Stand Apart through industry-shaping innovation, fresh ideas and simplicity to create a product that defines a lifestyle.”

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What sparked the idea for BOTE? BOTE was the result of right time and space convergence in late 2009 and early 2010. Magda and I moved to Destin, Florida, about five years prior where we both had started careers, Magda as a financial advisor and myself as a mechanical engineer. We had our first child in February of 2009 and in retrospect I think something “went off” in us that said now is “time to go.”

We first tried stand up paddling in late 2008 and loved the idea but hated the product both in form and function. All the boards we tried were the same thing but with a different name. They were all basically giant, unstable surfboards. It was around that time that I

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

looked at Magda and said, “We can make this better; we can make a board that stands apart.”

Magda agreed. So, we left our successful careers and started making our boats, or what we decided to call BOTE. When you graduated from Auburn in 2005, did you ever think you’d go on to be an entrepreneur and business owner?

I knew I wanted to create stuff very early in my life. That desire led me to Auburn and a study of mechanical engineering. I didn’t necessarily have a full vector on where I would go or what I would do, but I knew for certain creating and building were in my future. I found out early in my career phase that to be fully satisfied with my output, I needed to be in control of the input. I think this was the internal catalyst driving me toward entrepreneurship.

It wasn’t about money or working hours or any of these things, it was about complete control of the brand and product.

What skills or lessons from your Auburn Engineering experience helped you build BOTE? In my view, engineering is simply the practice of problem-solving using a fundamental set of laws manipulated to your advantage thereby achieving a desired outcome. I think that alone set me on a successful trajectory as an entrepreneur. Coupled with the practical experience of product design, manufacturing, etc., I was able to be an efficient “one-man band” on the operations side of the business for the first few years, moving from idea to reality much quicker than someone not armed with the experience of a design engineer. Specific things like CAD, materials science and machine shop classes were all invaluable arrows in my quiver.

I have to say though, the ultimate gift from my Auburn experience was the connection to the Auburn Family. I can’t overstate how much being an Auburn alumnus helped me in my business development. People would bend over backward to help me when I needed it. To this day, I will swear that without my Auburn connections, my business would have fallen on its face.

Do you see a natural correlation between fields of engineering and entrepreneurship? Or did you have to work to find a balance?

I think there are a lot of overlapping concepts, specifically on the analytical side. Without much money or an MBA, I was able to build a decent financial business model purely from engineering experience. As our business evolved and matured over the years into a sizeable enterprise that demanded professionalization, I was able to leverage engineering concepts to work with my teams to build corporate data models, dashboards and the controls you would expect from an engineer running a business.

What was the biggest obstacle you overcame in the building of BOTE? Learning how to manage and motivate people. It was absolutely the most difficult thing for me.

I simply settled on being authentically me. I tried to talk to everyone using the same language and context, and developed a communication cadence and channel that involved everyone and was as transparent as possible. As an entrepreneur, being transparent is challenging — mostly because it involves being vulnerable to those you are supposed to lead. But once you realize that the reality of the details drives people, the transparency — both good and bad — can become energizing.

What’s next?

Roughly 18 months ago myself, Magda, my investment partners Prairie Capital and the BOTE management team completed a successful majority sale transaction with Kent Outdoors.

I left BOTE last October, roughly a year after the close, turning the reigns over to the Kent team while shifting my focus to the future.

I plan on taking about a year off to recharge the tanks and spend some time with my three kids as they grow up. My family and I just moved from Destin to St. Petersburg, Florida, where we are looking to settle in before we launch the next brand.

Listen to our podcast with Corey Cooper at eng.auburn.edu/ginning

Be the Creed B E T H E C R E E D /// S T U D E N T

I believe in education,

which gives me the knowledge to work wisely

a n d t ra i n s my m i n d a n d my h a n d s to w o r k s k i l l f u l l y.

BY JEREMY HENDERSON

FATEMEH JAMSHIDI

Graduate Student Computer Science and Software Engineering When it comes to STEM education, Fatemeh Jamshidi believes that there are several keys to success. And 88 of them are ivory.

As part of her research, the doctoral candidate in computer science and software engineering (who also just earned a master’s degree in music education from Auburn) leads camps for grade schoolers geared toward instilling computer science concepts through basic music theory — two subjects she’s been passionate about since her childhood in Iran.

“Computer science is about math and so is music theory, so, in the camps, we’re assessing the engagement and interaction students have with the curriculum that uses a multidisciplinary approach,” said Jamshidi, an accomplished pianist who also

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directs Auburn’s Persian Music Ensemble. “Auburn will give you opportunities to express yourself and your interests rather than just getting involved with research that you may not necessarily enjoy. Getting a Ph.D. is a long process and enjoying the research is really important.”

Jamshidi also investigates the potential of machine learning and reinforcement learning to teach music online through selfregulated, auto-generated practice lessons based on a user’s individual learning skills.

“My dad was a faculty member in computer science,” she said.

“Ever since I was six years old taking piano lessons, I’ve been wanting to connect these dots.”

Listen to our podcast with Fatemeh Jamshidi at eng.auburn.edu/ginning

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

F A C U L T Y /// B E T H E C R E E D I believe in the human touch, which cultivates sympathy with my fellow men and mutual helpfulness and brings happiness for all.

BY AUSTIN PHILLIPS

MARIA AUAD

Associate Dean Graduate Studies and Faculty Development Maria Auad has been shattering glass ceilings since the day she arrived on the Plains.

Auad, who serves as the Gavin Distinguished Professor and the college’s associate dean for graduate studies and faculty development, first came to Auburn in 2006 as an assistant professor after completing her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Mar del Plata in her home country of Argentina. She previously served as a postdoctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology and as a research assistant at the University of Southern California.

— only the second woman in the college’s history to serve as a department chair — as the first director of the Center of Polymer and Advanced Composites and the first woman to ever hold the title of associate dean of engineering. In her current role, the college has risen in the U.S. News & World Report rankings to No. 31 among public institution graduate programs and No. 16 among all engineering institutions online graduate programs.

“Our rankings are a reflection of the hard work put in by our faculty and staff to ensure Auburn is providing the best studentcentered engineering experience in America — both on campus and online — and that our graduate students and faculty are producing cutting-edge research that improves the quality of life for all,” Auad said.

During her career at Auburn, Auad has served as the interim chair of the former Department of Polymer and Fiber Engineering

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Listen to our podcast with Maria Auad at eng.auburn.edu/ginning

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B E T H E C R E E D /// S T A F F I believe in honesty and truthfulness, without which I cannot win the respect and confidence of my fellow men.

BY KAREN HUNLEY

ALICIA HARKLESS

bachelor of computer science program, even those who have some college credits but no degree. And Harkless is passionate about making this the best experience possible for both students and faculty, not only in her new role as acting director, but since she stepped onto the Auburn University campus as EOL instructional designer in 2019.

Acting Director Engineering Online and Continuing Education Distance courses have been available in the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering since most people owned VCRs and distance students received tape-recorded courses in the mail.

Thanks to three decades of technology and COVID-19, things are much different now.

“The online education landscape has changed, and so are the people who want to take online courses,” said Alicia Harkless, acting director for the college’s Engineering Online and Continuing Education (EOL) unit.

She said that EOL helps meet the needs of busy, working engineers looking to earn a master’s degree; those looking to learn a new engineering discipline; and through the online

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Developing online courses can include many layers, whether it’s a simple collaboration on what technology tools can be used to meet a learning objective or completely building a course using sound pedagogical techniques and online best practices, Harkless said.

As acting director, she is also responsible for managing and collaborating with the EOL team, providing internal and external stakeholders access to online credit and non-credit course offerings, and overseeing the Engineering Professional Development program.

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

A L U M N I /// B E T H E C R E E D I believe that this is a practical world and that I can count only on what I earn.

Therefore, I believe in work , hard work .

BY AUSTIN PHILLIPS

Listen to our podcast with Patrick Duke at eng.auburn.edu/ginning

PATRICK DUKE, ’99

Civil Engineering Managing Director/Americas Leader Healthcare Project Advisory Solutions As a graduate of Hueytown High School, Patrick Duke learned early the value of work, hard work.

The smallest Class 6A school in the state at the time, Hueytown was often pitted against much larger schools and communities with much deeper resources.

role that I also associate with Auburn. It’s that chip on your shoulder.”

It’s with that mindset that Duke and his sister — who’s appropriately named Auburn — decided to start equipping underrepresented students with the tools and resources necessary to compete with any engineering graduate from across the county. The pair created the Janice Duke James Soaring Eagle Diversity Endowed Scholarship to honor their aunt, whose personal sacrifices allowed others in the family to chase their dreams. In addition, Duke also gives generously to the college’s Center for Inclusive Engineering Excellence.

Through his support, his hope is that students will have the ultimate Auburn experience like he did.

But that’s where a spirit that is not afraid was born.

“Hueytown, Alabama, is one of the greatest places ever. The people have a bond,” said Duke, ’99 civil engineering and managing director/Americas leader at Healthcare Project Advisory Solutions. “Growing up, we felt like we had to go the extra mile. It’s that mentality, that approach to life, that underdog

“I had more than an Auburn Family in college,” Duke said. “I had the support of my family, and I had an engineering family. I hope this scholarship opens doors and allows others to have the same opportunities I had.”

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DEPARTMENT HIGHLIGHTS

AEROSPACE

Improving flight stability through collaborative research

BY JOE MCADORY

Vrishank Raghav Associate Professor 334.844.6811 vzs0037@auburn.edu aub.ie/VRaghav

Vrishank Raghav, associate professor of aerospace engineering, is part of a three-year, $600,000 Defense Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (DEPSCoR) grant to better understand how bio-inspired surface texturing of aircraft wings can ensure smooth flight. There have been increased reports of ‘severe turbulence’ during flights across the U.S. Furthermore, significant delays in flights due to adverse weather conditions are also very common.

could be updrafts, downdrafts or vortices that are essentially swirling pockets of air that interact with an aerodynamic surface like a wing. When this interaction happens, it can lead to unsteady perturbations on the wing, which results in vibrations and potentially a stalling condition which is very dangerous.”

Is there an optimal solution to mitigate the problem? Raghav is partnering with a collaborator from Arizona State University to identify a solution. The study, “Understanding Vortex Turbulent Boundary Layer Interactions to Mitigate Separation Using Textured Surfaces,” is supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and is part of an $18 million nationwide project.

While his collaborator will explore bio-inspired textures that interact with the turbulent air flow close to the surface, Raghav will engineer the findings onto a scaled-down wing and test them in a wind tunnel.

“That’s because weather patterns bring in harsh aerodynamic environments for airplanes to fly through,” Raghav said. “These

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SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

Listen to our podcast with Vrishank Raghav at eng.auburn.edu/ginning

DEPARTMENT HIGHLIGHTS

BIOSYSTEMS

Researchers reimagine controlled environment agriculture

BY PAUL HOLLIS

Auburn by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture’s Sustainable Agriculture Systems program.

“CEA must be reimagined to become a sustainable approach to food production,” said Brendan Higgins, associate professor in the Department of Biosystems Engineering and project director.

“Our team’s long-term goal is to transform CEA strategically, managerially, technologically and socially to position it as a viable food production system capable of producing sufficient and nutritious foods within the low-carbon economy.”

Brendan Higgins Associate Professor 334.844.3532 bth0023@auburn.edu aub.ie/BHiggins

While controlled environment agriculture (CEA) can potentially improve access to local, nutritious fruits and vegetables on a yearly basis, the greenhouse gas emissions associated with greenhouse production is five times higher than field-grown produce.

For this reason, Auburn researchers are embarking on a wideranging and ambitious mission to reimagine CEA as a more sustainable approach to food production.

The Auburn research team will implement four strategies to lower the carbon intensity of CEA: reduce demand for heating and cooling in CEA; improve efficiency of CEA climate control; lower the carbon intensity of resource inputs; and shift consumer and producer behavior surrounding CEA products and practices.

The project, “Reimagining Controlled Environment in a LowCarbon World,” is the focus of a $9.95 million grant awarded to

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Listen to our podcast with Brendan Higgins at eng.auburn.edu/ginning

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DEPARTMENT HIGHLIGHTS

CHEMICAL

Biomedical research is making a difference in patient outcomes

BY CASSIE MONTGOMERY

Researchers in the Department of Chemical Engineering are delving into some of the world’s most challenging health issues.

Panagiotis Mistriotis Assistant Professor 334.844.5457 pmistriotis@auburn.edu aub.ie/PMistriotis

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Robert Pantazes Assistant Professor 334.844.4805 rjp0029@auburn.edu aub.ie/RPantazes

Chris Kieslich Assistant Professor 334.844.4827 cak0071@auburn.edu aub.ie/CKieslich

With the goal of improving patient outcomes through personalized medicine and expanding access to medical advances to the developing world, they are backed by some of the biggest funding agencies in the industry.

Improving Personalized Medicine Personalizing medicine and therapeutics to an individual patient has the potential to address many health issues from cancer and cardiovascular disease to fighting antibiotic resistant bacteria. Through the work of chemical engineering assistant professors Robert Pantazes and Panagiotis Mistriotis — both supported

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DEPARTMENT HIGHLIGHTS

“The widely held view is that cells can sense and respond to these cues but our understanding of the underlying mechanisms remains very limited,” he said. “Our lab explores how physical forces convert into biochemical signals to influence cell behavior.”

Expanding Access to the Developing World The future of vaccine development is going to be faster, cheaper and more geared toward the needs of the developing world. The technology behind the vaccines of the future will be impacted by the work of Chris Kieslich, assistant professor of chemical engineering.

Kieslich is the department’s latest recipient of the MIRA Award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences. Kieslich’s five-year, $1.87 million award for his work titled “Development of computational tools for accounting for host variability in predicting T-cell epitopes” marks the department’s third MIRA in two years, alongside Mistriotis and Pantazes.

“What we’re working on through computation is making tools that would be useful for designing new vaccines with a variety of applications that could be developed faster or cheaper because they’re easier to produce and store,” Kieslich said. “In very basic terms, we are developing tools that understand the interactions between a pathogen, such as a virus or bacteria, and the receptors in the immune system.”

through R35 National Institutes of General Medical Sciences Maximizing Investigators’ Research (MIRA) Awards of $1.75 million and $1.87 million, respectively — advances in personalized medicine are on the horizon.

Pantazes’s research focuses on developing and experimentally testing computational methods to design therapeutic proteins. In his lab, he and his graduate students are examining how to design antibodies better and faster than traditional approaches.

Mistriotis’s approach lies in the field of mechanobiology and will further examine fundamental cellular processes to develop novel therapeutic interventions against the initiation and progression of pathophysiological phenomena, including cardiovascular disease, aging and cancer. As a field of study, mechanobiology is concerned with the mechanisms by which cells sense and respond to mechanical signals. Mistriotis noted that cells in the human body are constantly subjected to these signals, but researchers aim to learn more about how these signals impact cell behavior.

The MIRA funding will allow his research team stability and flexibility to enhance scientific productivity and the chances for important research breakthroughs.

“Take COVID-19 for example. So much of the data we have is from the Western world and because of that, the models perform very well for people of those genetic backgrounds but not so much with other parts of the world,” Kieslich said. “Part of what we’re trying to do is develop our models in a way that will allow us to make it accessible for larger parts of the population. Having a platform or a way of developing vaccines that can be tailored for a specific population or individual is a huge possible outcome of our research but we’re really starting at the basic science.”

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DEPARTMENT HIGHLIGHTS

CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL

Exploring subsurface hydrogen storage to reduce CO 2 emissions

BY JEREMY HENDERSON

Lauren Beckingham W. Allen and Martha Reed Associate Professor 334.844.6260 leb0071@auburn.edu aub.ie/LBeckingham

Lauren Beckingham, W. Allen and Martha Reed Associate Professor of civil and environmental engineering, received her latest Early Career honor from the Department of Energy (DOE), which awarded $749,999 toward her research into subsurface hydrogen storage.

The project is a promising means of large-scale, long-term energy storage that could boost renewable energy and reduce atmospheric CO2 emissions.

Faculty Early Career Development award for research into improving simulation of mineral reaction rates, is the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering’s second DOE Early Career Award winner and only the third at Auburn University.

“A lot of great people apply for these programs and there are not a lot of awards, so I’m humbled and thankful for the support of a great group of students and postdocs, colleagues and mentors,” Beckingham said.

The five-year project will support laboratory experiments considering H2-brine-mineral interactions at field site conditions, elevated temperatures and pressures.

“Subsurface hydrogen storage in geologic formations is an emerging technology and there is much to be learned to understand the security, success and efficiency of these systems,” Beckingham said. “We hope to fill some of these knowledge gaps by considering potential interactions between injected H2, formation fluids and earth materials.”

Beckingham, who in 2019 received the National Science Foundation

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DEPARTMENT HIGHLIGHTS

COMPUTER SCIENCE AND SOFTWARE Research aims to address software security weaknesses

BY JOE MCADORY

“DevOps is the state-of-the-art process to develop software,” Rahman said. “It is expected to reach a market value of $12.8 billion by 2025. If there are unmitigated security weaknesses in DevOps artifacts, that will create large-scale consequences.”

Akond Rahman Assistant Professor 334.844.6352 akond@auburn.edu aub.ie/ARahman

Akond Rahman, assistant professor in computer science and software engineering, was awarded two National Science Foundation (NSF) awards as lead principal investigator totaling $332,000 in grant funding.

His projects focus on the development of techniques that will automatically detect security weaknesses in configuration scripts.

It will also educate students on the consequences of security weaknesses commonplace in development and operations (DevOps) software and how to mitigate them.

His research is a three-pronged thrust for one of the NSF-funded projects. First, qualitative analysis will be applied to determine a comprehensive list of security weaknesses for multiple configuration script languages and devise static analysis techniques for automatically identifying each category of security weakness.

Next, grammar-based parsing and formal method techniques will be applied and integrated into the derived static analysis so that false positives are reduced.

“Finally, the development context of practitioners from the open source and proprietary domain will be systematically mined to generate actionable alerts and suggestions, which will enable practitioners to fix security weaknesses,” Rahman said.

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DEPARTMENT HIGHLIGHTS

INDUSTRIAL AND SYSTEMS

ICAMS awarded $8.9M for smart manufacturing initiatives

BY JEREMY HENDERSON

The adoption of Smart Manufacturing is fast becoming a necessity for small- and medium-sized manufacturers (SMMs) looking to stay competitive in the Industry 4.0 age. For those SMMs in the national security ecosystem, it’s no longer a suggestion — it’s a requirement.

Enter, once again, the Interdisciplinary Center for Advanced Manufacturing Systems (ICAMS) at Auburn University.

Gregory Harris Department Chair 334.844.1407 gah0015@auburn.edu aub.ie/GHarris

Greg Purdy Assistant Professor 334.844.1390 greg.purdy@auburn.edu aub.ie/GPurdy

Established in 2020 to help SMMs bridge the digital divide that threatens to render 85% of the American industrial base obsolete over the next decade, the center will use a significant portion of its latest and largest award from the Department of Defense’s (DOD) Office of Industrial Policy’s Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment (IBAS) Program, $8.9 million, to leverage its research and outreach efforts promoting advanced manufacturing in small and medium manufacturing operations “We have to provide SMMs a better understanding of the processes behind new guidelines and best practices necessary to engage in secure work for the DOD,” said principal investigator (PI) Greg Purdy, assistant professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering.

“With this grant, we can equip them with the tools necessary to produce

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DEPARTMENT HIGHLIGHTS

parts in a classified manufacturing environment.”

Whereas, a decade ago, cyber threats were generally exclusive to IT systems, Purdy says that the operational infrastructure of manufacturers is now being directly targeted by malicious actors.

“These days, SMMs can no longer rely on basic cybersecurity,” Purdy said. “They need to meet even more stringent requirements to protect sensitive information. But some of these smaller organizations and companies, those with fewer than 50 employees, might not think they’re able to offer that level of protection — they might not currently have the resources to.”

Co-PI Gregory Harris, ICAMS director and chair of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, agrees.

“Data integration and analysis in a classified manufacturing environment (CME) is daunting to most SMMs,” Harris said of the issue. “Many are choosing to forego the increased productivity and improved quality available through the application of digital manufacturing technologies because they are worried about the potential for data to escape. During conversations with SMMs, the topic of classified advanced manufacturing continues to be a subject and source of consternation for the nation’s defense industrial base.”

To combat these reservations, ICAMS is creating a CME within its 20,000 square-foot state-of-the-art facility. Located on Pumphrey Avenue in Auburn, the ICAMS production environment already houses waterjet, laser cutting capabilities and welding infrastructure. The ICAMS facility also features dedicated resources critical to some of the fastest-growing manufacturing sectors, including a 4-axis friction stir welder and a Swissstyle machining center, allowing the center to support a wide range of manufacturing organizations. A digital manufacturing demonstration cell and cyber-physical machining range is also under way.

challenge by developing strategies that allow SMMs to manage the production of parts for the DOD while still maintaining capabilities to produce for commercial markets. Traditionally, this requires duplicating machines and other resources to enable an organization to produce for both markets. However, this tends to disproportionately impact SMMs that might not have the financial capital to duplicate their manufacturing systems. Having unutilized equipment directly affects their ability to stay in business.”

To address this particular challenge, ICAMS will also use the DOD award to develop a Hybrid-Secure Manufacturing (HSM) cell to showcase a flexible manufacturing environment that can produce parts supporting DOD contracts and be quickly reconfigured to produce parts on general commercial contracts.

“This will highlight the security considerations and necessary architecture to allow SMMs flexible DOD and commercial manufacturing,” Harris said. “But it will also be valuable in workforce development. We’ll be able to train organizations from the shop floor to the C-suite. It’s an approach that can help manufacturers understand the business case for HSM through firsthand experience.”

Other tasks the award will help accomplish include ICAMS’ SMM Prototyping Assistance Program, and a technology adoption seed program offering SMMs willing to implement smart manufacturing up to $50,000 in matching funds, an approach that has proven highly successful in South Korean industrial digitization initiatives.

Other co-PIs include Lewis Payton, Peter Liu, Konstantinos Mykoniatis, Yadrianna Acosta-Sojo, Mark Schall, Daniel Silva Izquierdo and Erin Garcia, all faculty in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering.

However, Harris said that even with the barriers of entry to Industry 4.0 lowered, many SMMs might still find defense manufacturing contracts both a blessing and a curse.

“When demand for a defense part is high, many SMMs add capacity to meet the demand, but then the surge ends, and part orders decrease, even to zero,” Harris said. “Now the SMM has a problem with excess capacity and costs. This feast or famine cycle has been the cause of many SMMs going out of business.

The question ICAMS aims to answer is how to address this

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Listen to our podcast with Greg Harris at eng.auburn.edu/ginning

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DEPARTMENT HIGHLIGHTS

ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER Utilizing machine learning to improve data collection

BY JOE MCADORY

university, the college and our department and will further inspire our team of graduate students.”

Yin Sun Associate Professor 334.844.1867 yzs0078@auburn.edu aub.ie/YSun

Fresh data is vital because it’s timely. Important data is vital too because it’s necessary for quick decision-making. Can machines learn to provide both sets of data simultaneously? Yin Sun, associate professor in electrical and computer engineering, believe they can — and will prove it through his newest proposal, “Semantic and Goal-oriented Status Updating for Inference, Monitoring, and Decision-Making,” through a $516,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award.

“This is a very special and important recognition of my work,” Sun said. “Earning an NSF CAREER Award is great recognition for the

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Sun becomes the department’s third CAREER Award winner in three years.

“As an administrator, it’s been special to watch Dr. Sun’s growth as a researcher and educator,” said Mark Nelms, electrical and computer engineering department chair. “Dr. Sun is the embodiment of a scholar and educator who is committed to finding solutions to everyday technical problems.”

Sun’s proposal aims to use information-theoretic analyses and experimental studies to interpret how the freshness and semantics of information affect the performance of real-time inference, monitoring and decision-making systems; design new communications techniques and networking protocols for optimizing freshness/semantics measures and system performance; and explore the benefits of signal-aware status updating that goes beyond Age of Information to additional performance gain.

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MECHANICAL

Achieving a cleaner future for the transportation sector

BY JEREMY HENDERSON

“The overall objective of this project is to examine how we can leverage unique chemical and physical properties of lowtemperature plasmas (LTP) to improve the energy extraction and efficiency of renewable fuels with potentially less environmental harm,” Tsolas said.

Nick Tsolas Assistant Professor 334.844.5496 nzt0020@auburn.edu aub.ie/NTsolas

Mitigating the environmental impact of meeting the world’s rapidly increasing transportation energy demands is a problem.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) thinks Nick Tsolas may have a solution.

The assistant professor of mechanical engineering recently received a $518,000 NSF CAREER Award to investigate lowtemperature plasma assisted combustion of oxygenated fuels as a potential alternative to achieving a cleaner and sustainable future for the transportation sector.

“Experimentally, we have developed two unique experiments to study various aspects of this phenomena, including a plasmacoupled flow reactor to study fundamental plasma-chemical interactions, and a plasma-coupled rapid compression machine,” he added.

Although the application of the project was meant to address energy issues in the transportation sector, Tsolas expects that fundamental outcomes from his research can also be adopted to support other LTP-based applications, such as micro-propulsion for CubeSats, pollution remediation and valorizing carbon dioxide to manufacture value-added fuels and electro-fuels.

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DEPARTMENT HIGHLIGHTS

MATERIALS

Developing innovative methods for material response modification

BY JEREMY HENDERSON

Though isotopes exist everywhere, they are always evenly distributed in space.

Siyuan Dai Associate Professor Ginn Faculty Achievement Fellow 334.844.4818 szd0085@auburn.edu aub.ie/SDai

The National Science Foundation recently awarded Siyuan Dai, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, $720,000 for a CAREER project aimed at developing innovative methods for material response modification benefitting a variety of applications from computer science to biomedicine.

“I want to reposition isotopes and spatially engineer them for new material properties,” Dai said.

To do so, he will use state-of-the-art techniques to build van der Waals heterostructures comprised of various monoisotopic components in order to establish advances over current isotopehomogenous material systems.

Dai said the project’s prototype heterostructures can be modified to precisely manage nanoscale energy capacity, electromagnetic wave transmission and photonic density of states for utilization in biosensing, energy transfer, infrared light sources and quantum information and technologies.

“The proposed research will establish a conceptually new material engineering methodology to establish distinctive material properties for a range of functionalities. It will fill the scientific gap of spatial heterogeneity of isotopes,” Dai said.

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WIRELESS

Advancing fundamental understandings of wireless hierarchical federated learning

BY JOE MCADORY

Gong’s project is expected to advance the fundamental understandings of, and develop adaptive and efficient algorithms and schemes for, computation and communication designs of wireless hierarchical federated learning — a machine-learning approach that trains a machine-learning system across multiple decentralized servers from distributed wireless devices with local data samples — while also addressing its challenges.

Xiaowen Gong Associate Professor 334.844.1851 xzg0017@auburn.edu aub.ie/XGong

The NSF CAREER Award also focuses on the integration of research within education.

Xiaowen Gong, associate professor in electrical and computer engineering, recently earned a five-year, $500,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award for his project, “Towards Efficient and Fast Hierarchical Federated Learning in Heterogeneous Wireless Edge Networks.”

“I’m so humbled to receive this honor,” said Gong, who specializes in wireless engineering. “There are so many other researchers who do excellent work but have not received this award. I view this award more as inspiration and encouragement for my future work.”

Gong proposes hands-on wireless and machine learning/AI projects for college students and outreach activities on robotics for K-12 students.

He was previously granted $589,889 by the NSF to provide handson research experiences in robotics and machine learning/AI to approximately 30 STEM middle school teachers in underserved regions of Alabama during the next three years.

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FACULTY HIGHLIGHTS published in the March 2022 issue of the ACI Structural Journal.

Hunter Burch, assistant professor of electrical engineering, alongside an undergraduate researcher, participated in the Polar Aeronomy and Remote Sensing (PARS) Summer School and corresponding research campaign at the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) in Gakona, Alaska.

The experience involved writing a scientific proposal and experiment plan to investigate a particular aspect of the science surrounding the auroral electrojet current using HAARP.

Fa Foster Dai, Godbold Endowed Chair Professor of electrical and computer engineering, was recently named Region 3 Outstanding Engineer by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The award recognizes outstanding contributions through teaching, government or at an institute of higher learning.

Roy Hartfield, the Walt and Virginia Woltosz Professor of aerospace

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engineering, was awarded the Aerodynamics Award from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the organization’s annual convention in June. The award is presented for meritorious achievement in the field of applied aerodynamics, recognizing notable contributions in the development, application and evaluation of aerodynamic concepts and methods.

Shiwen Mao, the Earle C. Williams Eminent Scholar Professor of electrical and computer engineering and director of the Wireless Engineering Center, was named a fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) in March 2023. The IET is a multidisciplinary professional engineering institution with 155,000 members in 148 countries.

Jasmeet Lamba, associate professor of biosystems engineering, is the principal investigator on a $6 million grant from the National Science Foundation. The project aims to develop and assess innovative agricultural management practices that will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural systems, improve soil health and water quality and reduce the vulnerability of crop failures during droughts. The co-PIs from the Department of Biosystems Engineering are Sushil Adhikari, professor; William Batchelor, professor; and Hossein Jahromi, assistant research professor.

Andrzej Nowak, chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, was awarded the Charles S. Whitney Medal and the Mete A. Sozen Award for Excellence in Structural Research, both from the American Concrete Institute. The Charles S. Whitney Medal is given annually for noteworthy engineering development work in concrete design or construction, while the Mete A. Sozen Award for Excellence in Structural Research was awarded for Nowak’s coauthored paper “Strength Reduction Factors for ACI 318 Strut-and-Tie Method for Deep Beams,” which was

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Akond Rahman, assistant professor of computer science and software engineering, was awarded a $553,295 grant from the National Science Foundation for his project, “Resilient Operations for Deployment Units Used in Container Orchestration.”

Rahman is currently leading three NSF-funded projects, all of which focus on software engineering.

Clint Snider, visiting assistant professor in electrical and computer engineering, received the Young Scientist Award at the International Union of Radio Science’s General Assembly and Scientific Symposium for his research project, “A Novel Lightning Strike Location Prediction Method.” This award is given to select scientists under the age of 35 whose work was deemed exceptional.

Alice Smith, the Joe W. Forehand/Accenture Professor of industrial and systems engineering, received the Auburn University Author Award for her book, “Women in Computational Intelligence: Key Advances and Perspectives on Emerging Topics.” Additionally, along with two doctoral students, Smith visited the Norwegian University of Science and Technology as part of a project funded by the Research Council of Norway.

David Timm, Brasfield & Gorrie Professor and associate chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, was elected to the Association of Asphalt Paving Technologists (AAPT) Board of Directors, an organization with more than 800 members that is a leading worldwide community dedicated to excellence and advancement of asphalt paving technology.

Jakita Thomas, Philpott Westpoint Stevens Associate Professor of computer science and software engineering, received a $300,000 National Science Foundation EAGER award for her project, “Collaborative Research: EAGER: Intersectional Computing.” The project will develop a series of workshops to engage members of the Broadening Participation in Computing Alliances and Black, Latina and Native American women graduate students to develop a community of support in computing disciplines.

Jin Wang, the Walt and Virginia Woltosz Professor of chemical engineering, and Peter He, associate professor of chemical engineering, co-authored a pair of studies that explore means to convert bio-gas into animal feed. Their project, “Circular Aquaculture Through A Next-Generation Waste-to-Feed Biotechnology,” earned a four-year, $650,000 U.S. Department of Agriculture grant, while a second study, “A Novel Multi-Tray Dry Biofilm Reactor for Methane Capture from Air,” was awarded a twoyear, $200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation.

Listen to our podcasts with Akond Rahman and David Timm at eng.auburn.edu/ginning

Giving the Auburn Experience Generations of students have come to love the Auburn Experience. For alumni like Nicole Faulk, ’96 and ’99 mechanical engineering, creating a legacy through a planned gift to Auburn allows them to create similar experiences for future students. Let our gift planning specialists help you create a meaningful and tax-saving gift that impacts Auburn for generations.

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AUBURN UNIVERSITY OFFICE OF GIFT PLANNING (334) 844-7375 | PLANNEDGIVING@AUBURN.EDU | AUBURNGIVING.ORG/ESTATE

AWARDS

THE AWARD GOES TO...

Eight outstanding engineering alumni and one longtime faculty member of the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering were honored by the Auburn Alumni Engineering Council during a September ceremony for their distinguished professional careers. These alumni include five who were recognized as Distinguished Auburn Engineers, three as Outstanding Young Auburn Engineers and chemical engineering associate professor and the college’s former associate dean for academics for Superior Service. The council also presented former Interim Dean Steve Taylor with a portrait honoring his service to the college.

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DISTINGUISHED AUBURN ENGINEERS Pam Boyd, ’92 Electrical Engineering Pam Boyd is a 1992 graduate with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. During her career at Alabama Power, she held roles as transmission system operator and other various engineering positions. Her leadership roles included being the first female distribution support manager, operations manager and planning manager. She was named Birmingham Division distribution general manager in 2012 and her responsibilities expanded in 2016 to include power delivery services general manager. After her retirement from Alabama Power in 2021, she formed her own consulting company, Boyd Innovative Solutions.

During her career, she also served as the storm center director for Alabama Power, leading the company’s storm response after the devastating April 27, 2011, tornado outbreak.

Boyd has established an endowed scholarship in the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering — the Boyd Family Endowed Scholarship.

She has also given her time back to Auburn University by mentoring students and investing in the workforce. Boyd has been involved with the Center for Inclusive Engineering Excellence, and

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

The 2023 Auburn Alumni Engineering Council award winners included, from left, Distinguished Auburn Engineer Ed Yeilding, ’72 electrical engineering; Distinguished Auburn Engineer Pam Boyd, ’92 electrical engineering; Distinguished Auburn Engineer Richard Kretzschmar, ’90 and ’96 aerospace engineering; Outstanding Young Auburn Engineer Rodmesia Clarke, ’08 chemical engineering; Distinguished Auburn Engineer Metrick Houser, ’93 chemical engineering; Distinguished Auburn Engineer Mike Ogles, ’89 mechanical engineering, represented by his son Will Ogles; Outstanding Young Auburn Engineer Brandon Young, ’10 electrical engineering; Outstanding Young Auburn Engineer Christa Musgrove, ’07 mechanical engineering; and Superior Service Steve Duke, chemical engineering associate professor and the college’s former associate dean for academics.

she currently serves on the Auburn Alumni Engineering Council and the Electrical and Computer Engineering Advisory Council.

Additionally, she was the first co-chair of the inaugural 100+ Women Strong executive committee.

Metrick Houser, ’93 Chemical Engineering Metrick Houser earned his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering in 1993 and an MBA from Auburn in 2001. He is currently the director, global sourcing North America with Sylvamo.

He previously served as director of energy, raw materials and supplier diversity sourcing for International Paper (IP), which spun off Sylvamo. During his career, he has been responsible for $1.2 billion in goods and services for Sylvamo each year, while managing organizational development, supplier contracting and governance. In his previous roles within IP, he has had to manage complex issues across hundreds of facilities in procurement.

Houser serves Auburn University in many capacities, including the Auburn Alumni Association Board as vice chair of the financial and strategic oversight committee, the Auburn Alumni Engineering Council and the Department of Chemical Engineering Advisory Council. He is a longtime supporter of the National Society of Black Engineers and the college’s Center for Inclusive Engineering

Excellence. Beyond Auburn, Houser serves Alpha Phi Alpha — the oldest African American college fraternity. He has served as the district director for the state of Tennessee, committing himself to mentor young men and to live up to the aims of “manly deeds, scholarship and love for all mankind.” He supports the youth in Tennessee and the broader region by leading programs such as “Go to High School, Go to College.”

Houser helped establish the Alpha Phi Alpha Omicron Kappa endowment at Auburn University, helping students obtain financial support for generations.

Richard Kretzschmar, ’90 and ’96 Aerospace Engineering Richard Kretzschmar earned his bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering in 1990 and his master’s degree in the same discipline in 1996. He also earned an MBA from MIT. He currently serves as CEO of Integration Innovation Inc. (i3). Kretzschmar has been with the company since 2017, and previously served as i3’s president.

Prior to joining i3, he served as the acting deputy program executive officer for aviation for the U.S. Army. He possesses more than 30 years of aerospace engineering and program acquisition experience, encompassing a variety of missile, rotary and fixed wing aircraft and unmanned aircraft systems. He is known for

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AWARDS both his technical and management expertise related to major weapon system development and acquisition. An aerodynamicist by training, he joined the Army Aviation and Missile Research Development and Engineering Center in 1992 and served in a variety of technical leadership positions. He transitioned to PEO Aviation in 2011 and served in leadership roles including deputy project manager, unmanned aircraft systems, project manager for the improved turbine engine and future vertical lift programs.

He is level III certified in program management and advanced system engineering, research, development and engineering career fields. Kretzschmar has won numerous awards including the Department of the Army Meritorious Civilian Service Award in 2017, the Department of the Army Superior Civilian Service Award in 2015, the Army Aviation Association of America 2014 Department of the Army Civilian of the Year Award, the 2014 Association of the United States Army (Redstone Chapter) Civilian of the Year, the Department of the Army Commander’s Award for Civilian Service in 2012 and was named by this group as an Outstanding Young Auburn Engineer in 2004.

Closer to home, Kretzschmar has served on the Auburn Alumni Engineering Council, the Auburn University Huntsville Research Center Advisory Board and the Auburn Aerospace Engineering Advisory Council. He is a member of the Engineering EAGLE Society and the Auburn Alumni Association.

Mike Ogles, ’89 Mechanical Engineering Mike Ogles earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering in 1989. He served the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering for several years as director of NASA programs and assistant director of the National Center for Additive Manufacturing Excellence (NCAME) until his passing in 2021. Prior to coming back home to Auburn, Ogles led Geocent’s information technology and engineering service business unit in support of NASA, the Department of Defense and industry partners across the nation. He worked in the aerospace, defense and automotive manufacturing industries for more than 25 years, which included experience in advanced manufacturing, engineering management, business unit management, systems engineering, executive management and business development.

For his efforts, he was previously recognized with the Most Valuable Player Award by his peers in the Space Launch System (SLS) Project Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, and most recently awarded NASA’s Outstanding Public Leadership Medal which is presented to non-government individuals or to an individual who was not a government employee or government contractor who has achieved notable leadership accomplishments that significantly influence the NASA mission.

Ogles, along with his brother Mark, ‘89 electrical engineering, established a scholarship endowment that will provide for Auburn mechanical and electrical engineering students for years to come.

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Ed Yeilding, ’72 Electrical Engineering Ed Yeilding earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1972. He began his career as a co-op student working in Tennessee at Arnold Engineering and Development Complex and at TVA’s Cumberland Steam Plant, and commissioned through ROTC. After pilot training at Williams Air Force Base, his assignments included: the RF-4 at Bergstrom Air Force Base and in Okinawa, Japan, the F-4E fighter at Moody Air Force Base, the SR-71 at Beale Air Force Base and the C-20 at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington D.C. While at Moody in 1982, he earned a master’s degree in management through Troy University.

In 1983, he was selected for the SR-71 at Beale and flew 93 overseas reconnaissance missions and became an SR-71 instructor pilot and developmental test pilot. When the SR-71 fleet was retired in 1990, the Smithsonian Institution requested one for display and requested an official coast-to-coast aircraft speed record to call the public’s attention to the retirement of the SR-71 and to honor all the Americans who designed, maintained, supported and flew the aircraft during its 25 years of Cold War service. Departing California on March 6, 1990, SR-71 tail 972, pilot Yeilding and Reconnaissance Systems Officer J.T. Vida set that record, plus three city-to-city speed records. The four records still stand. Cruise speed was the flight manual limit, Mach 3.3, or 2,190 miles per hour, reaching an altitude that day of 83,000 feet, flying coast-tocoast in 67 minutes 54 seconds. In his next assignment at Andrews Air Force Base from 1990-96, Yeilding flew worldwide special air missions in the C-20.

After 23 years of active military service, Yeilding next flew the DC-9, DC-10 and the 747-400 for Northwest Airlines, retiring in 2009 as a Delta pilot after the airlines merged. He was inducted into the Alabama Aviation Hall of Fame in 2007, named to the Florence Walk of Honor in 2008 and named as a Distinguished Eagle Scout in 2011. His military awards include three Meritorious Service Medals, four Air Medals, three Commendation Medals, six Outstanding Unit Awards and four Combat Readiness Medals.

OUTSTANDING YOUNG AUBURN ENGINEERS Rodmesia Clarke, ’08 Chemical Engineering Rodmesia Clarke earned her bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering in 2008 and an MBA in 2012 from Texas A&M University. She currently serves as the director of asset management for Enbridge Gas. She previously served as an asset process engineer for BP America Production Company, commercial associate for the development program, manager of process development and manager of project execution for Spectra Energy Corporation. Once Spectra became Enbridge, Clarke served as supervisor for project execution and manager of maintenance programs. She later served as a business operations and project management office leader for Schneider Electric.

She has championed the transition of a $200 million portfolio from operations to projects, establishing a highly competent

SAMUEL GINN COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

AWARDS team — from scratch — capable of successfully managing and executing change initiatives. She conceptualized and pitched several changes for the organizational structure of the project execution team at Spectra Energy, gaining approval and launching structural changes that improved operations. She also spearheaded the roll-out of a risk identification tool for operating assets across the U.S. and developed all communication and training plans. Her accomplishments also include the development of a process monitoring tool to identify operational issues for offshore production operating assets and prevent reductions throughout, keeping output above 100bbl per day.

to a fully functional small business by 2019. Since that time, Young Management & Consulting has generated more than $37 million in revenue in the electric, gas, infrastructure and technology sectors.

Clarke serves on the Department of Chemical Engineering’s Advisory Council and the 100+ Women Strong Executive Committee. She also was a founding member of the college’s Young Alumni Council and the Auburn Alumni Association’s Young Alumni Council, and served on the Center for Inclusive Engineering Excellence’s 25th Anniversary host committee. She supports the college financially by giving to programming and scholarships, including establishing the Lula Pearl Collins Endowed Scholarship.

SUPERIOR SERVICE

Christa Musgrove, ’07 Mechanical Engineering Christa Musgrove earned her bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Auburn University in 2007, followed by an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University in 2023. During the span of more than 16 years, she has forged a remarkable career at Chevron, assuming various roles including operations superintendent, production supervisor, operations advisor, subsea intervention engineer and facilities engineer. Currently, she serves as a staff advisor for corporate strategy and sustainability.

Musgrove’s dedication to innovation is evident through her copatent holder status for a subsea live hydrocarbon fluid retrieval system and method, granted in 2019. Her passion for leadership, mentorship and lifelong learning shines through her selection for numerous Chevron leadership programs, presentations at the Teledyne Brown Technology Showcase and service as a Chevron University Recruiter for Penn State, the University of Texas and Auburn. She has also received Lean Sigma Green Belt Certification.

In addition to her professional accomplishments, Musgrove remains deeply committed to her alma mater, actively participating in 100+ Women Strong, the Department of Mechanical Engineering Industry Advisory Board and contributing to the university’s Foy and the College of Engineering’s EAGLE giving societies.

Brandon Young, ’10 Electrical Engineering Brandon Young graduated from Auburn University with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 2010 and later went on to earn a master’s degree of engineering from UAB in 2014. He is a member of Omega Psi Phi fraternity incorporated, is a certified project management professional and serves as president and CEO of Young Management & Consulting. He founded Young Management & Consulting in 2015, pushing the firm from a start-up

Young has established the Randy De Wayne Young Jr. Memorial Endowed Scholarship in the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering, is a member of the college’s Weatherby Society and is a donor for the newly constructed Legacy Plaza. He currently serves on the leadership team for American Heart Association Hard with Hearts campaign and was named as an Auburn Alumni Association 20 Under 40 recipient in 2022.

Steve Duke, Chemical Engineering Associate Professor and the college’s former Associate Dean for Academics Steve Duke currently serves as an associate professor of chemical engineering. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemical engineering from Georgia Tech before going to work with ExxonMobil. He later earned his doctorate in the same discipline from the University of Illinois. For more than 25 years, Duke has dutifully served the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering. He served as the college’s associate dean for academics from 201320, and played a leading role in conceptualizing and making the Brown-Kopel Center a reality. In that role, he also worked closely with the Academics and Student Experience Committee of the Auburn Alumni Engineering Council, the Engineering Young Alumni Council and the Engineering Student Council as the college’s liaison.

Duke teaches courses in process design and simulation, chemical separations, fluid mechanics, transport phenomena and introductory engineering. He has received the college’s prestigious Birdsong-Walker Superior Teaching Award three times, as well as the SGA Outstanding Faculty Award.

In addition, he was the driving force of the formation of the college’s Engineers Without Borders student chapter, and has been central to the chapter’s partnership with communities in Bolivia to help engineer better living environments and sustainable water sources for local residents.

The Auburn Alumni Engineering Council (AAEC) was formed in 1966 as a group of alumni who work together to support the vision and goals of the college. The council meets twice annually to assist and advise the college, and its members serve on a variety of committees geared to the mission and operation of the college.

Council members are an active and valued component of the College of Engineering family. They demonstrate a continuing commitment to move the college to new levels of excellence and take its place among the nation’s premier engineering institutions.

The council provides leadership and participation in areas such as academics, development, governmental affairs and public relations.

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